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Ad-do ^tat. 65. 






Alexander Campbell's 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND 



HOW HE IS REMEMBERED BY THOSE 
WHO SAW HIM THEN. 



By THOMAS CHALMERS, A. B., 

PASTOR STERLING PLACE CHURCH OF CHRIST, 
BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



Philosophy as well as relig-ion teaches that to conquer enemies is 
not the work of sword?, or lances or bows of steel. It is not to bind 
men's persons to a triumphal car, to incarcerate them in strongholds, or 
to make them surrender to superior bravery, prowess and strength. 
To conquer an enemy is to convrrt him into a friend, — Alexander 
Campbell \vi 1S30. 



Louisville. Ky. 

Guide Printing & Publishing Co 

1892. 



OCT 18 1892 ) 










Copyrighted by 

Guide Printing & Publishing Company, 

1892. 



.^ 






+ 

^ 

^ 



TO MY mOTHSR 

Wtiose patier\ce ar^d appreciatiori 

"Were iT\y er\courageii\er\t 

durir\g tl:\e \v?ritir\g of tl:\ese papers, 

tilis little booK 

IS DEDICATED. 



PREFACE 



In justice to myself and respect to the reader, it 
is but right that I state here, that when the papers 
of this little book began to appear in The Guide, it 
was no thought of mine that they should ever take 
a more permanent form; and it has been only at the 
urgent desire of many friends, known and unknown, 
that I consented to their publication. During the 
four months while these papers were being written 
and published weekly, the author was busier than at 
any other time in his life. With the care of a con- 
gregation of over five hundred members, the editing 
of a bi-weekly church paper, preaching every night 
for three weeks of that time, moving from one con- 
gregation to another with all the burdens and con- 
fusion incident to such a change, doing considerable 
other miscellaneous writing, he wrote these papers, 
each one as it was needed by the publisher. 

The narrative as a whole is authentic, though it 
would be too much for me to claim that I have pro- 
duced verbatim the speeches of my informants. The 
whole matter required such a developing as to make 
it symmetrical and complete, and this I have not 
hesitated to do, though it has been my constant aim 
to be true to my text. 

If the story here told leads the young people of 
our homes, our Sunday-schools, and our societies of 
Christian endeavor, to a better appreciation and a 
greater interest in one of America's chief reformers, 
it will have fulfilled its mission. 

Thomas Chalmers. 

Brooklyn, N. F., March 25, 1892, 



INTRODUCTION. 



HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL. 



Alexander Campbell appeared on the field 
of religious conflict at a ^'psychological mo- 
ment." The disturbed condition of theology 
in the public mind demanded the work which 
he did. There was a lull in the battle which 
had raged on Christian territory for more than 
three centuries. Persecutions had ceased, the 
mighty engines of the Inquisition rested, and 
the last embers of the fagots at the stake had 
become cold. The lull was one of dazed con- 
fusion. The warriors had stopped to breathe 
and look about them to see really who was 
right and who was wrong. They surely could 
not all be right, but for toleration's sake — for 
peace and rest — each one decided to give all 
the others over to Satan and perdition, and let 
them work their own damnation if they chose. 



8 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

That something was out of joint was plain, but 
in the unskilled theological surgery of the 
time, no one could see just where the fracture 
was, or how to deal with it. Just then Alex- 
ander Campbell came. ''We are all wrong," 
said he, ''and can never live in Christian con- 
cord, even though Ave may agree to practice 
mutual forbearance so long as we stand off 
looking at each other at these angles. Let us 
return to the original church as it is developed 
and portrayed in Scripture." That was a 
novel idea. The disputants looked each other 
in the face and smiled; but many were 
ashamed to obey the summons immediately, 
though it had a salutary effect even on those 
who stood still in their tracks, and from that 
day many have been the longing, lingering 
glances cast toward the primitive church. And 
we may be assured that, from this day on, the 
great Christian movements which contain the 
elements of permanency, will be in the direc- 
tion of the early church. 

The present religious awakening in France 
will carry the church, says M. Vogue, toward 
a more "primitive evangelical faith." The 
waves of Campbell's influence have spread far 
beyond the circle of his own religious house- 
hold. In a conversation last year with one of 
the most eminent clergymen in New York City, 
Avho has been the spokesman of his denomina- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 9 

tion for Christian unity, I found what seemed 
to be an explanation for his progressive spirit 
and views when he said he had early read 
much of Campbell's writings. I would not, 
however, be understood to believe that the 
great movements of which I speak, are the 
effects of this one man's influence. They 
have a greater meaning for me than that — 
but that Alexander Campbell was the greatest 
and ablest exponent of the idea which under- 
lies these movements, as Calvin was of the 
Divine Sovereignty idea, Wesley of the per- 
sonal piety idea, and Channing of the divine 
humanity idea, is what I mean to say. His 
name stands for the new doctrine, of a return 
to the conditions of primitive Christianity. 
^'To come firmly and fairly to original 
ground," taking up things where the apostles 
left them ; toj^e able to produce a ^'Thus saith 
the Lord," eithm* in expressed statement or 
approved precedent, for everything that is re- 
quired \ to rebuild the walls of the spiritual 
Jerusalem; — this is Campbellism if Camp- 
bellism is anything, and if any one wishes to 
apply to these human efforts that name, and is 
understood to mean no more, it would be dif- 
ficult to reject the designation. 

A sketch of Campbell's life and the external 
or objective conditions that contributed to the 
success of his great ecclesiastical enterprise 



10 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

viewed in relation to his great intellectual 
make-up, should be the trend of these pre- 
liminary pages. 

Alexander Campbell was born in Antrim 
county, Ireland, September 12, 1788. His 
maternal ancestors were Huguenots who, 
driven from France, after Louis XIV. had 
revoked the edict of Nantes, had sought 
refuge among the Presbyterian population of 
the North of Ireland. The blood of these in- 
telligent. God-fearing, but man-defying and 
courageous Frenchmen was no slight legacy. 
On his father's side Alexander was of High- 
land Scotch descent. No Highland clan has 
played more important and respectable a part 
in the history of the world than has the clan 
Campbell of Argyle. It was on the territory 
of this clan, and through its steady support 
that the light of Christianity and education j as 
kindled on the little isle of lona by Columba, 
in the sixth century, was long kept burning, 
and it was as late as the eleventh century that 
the ancient and purer religion of the Culdecs 
was replaced on the western coasts of Scot- 
land by the ecclesiasticism of Rome. There is 
something innately inimical to religious cor- 
ruption in the sturdy stock of the western isles 
of Scotland, for it was here that the restored 
Gospel in the early days of Protestantism was 
received back again, as something precious but 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 11 

lost, by these people who have so stoutly 
maintained it since. The Roman church held 
dominion for less than five centuries over the 
Scottish ancestors of Alexander Campbell. 
His grandfather was a Roman Catholic, but 
became an Episcopalian; his father, Thomas 
Campbell, advanced one step farther and 
became a Presbyterian, and Alexander 
completed the return to the primitive 
faith. These steps indicate the tendency of 
the stock ; there was something in it antago- 
nistic to ecclesiastical power and ritual, and 
whenever a step was taken, the face was turn- 
ed toward Jerusalem. Opposite tendencies 
are often noticed. In the early part of this 
century the Oxford movement made itself felt 
in the whole religious society of England, 
turning the faces of Puritans toward Canter- 
bury, and of Anglicans toward Rome where 
its logical end was, and resulting as it in- 
evitably would, in a wide-spread secession to 
the Roman church, where Newman, Pusey, 
Keble and Froude constitutionally belonged 
any way. There was no cause of alarm to 
Protestants; it was a natural and temporal 
reaction from the uncouthness and ugliness in 
the Puritan idea of worship. But the faces of 
the Campbell family were not turned toward 
Rome or Canterbury — they were not seeking 
beauty and symbolism in church worship ; 



12 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

they were lost in the woods and were '* seek- 
ing for the old paths" — they turned their 
faces toward the city of the Great Pentecost, 
that they might find the old landmarks ; then 
beauty of worship might be considered, but 
not till the true church is found. 

Thomas Campbell, the father of Alexander, 
was graduated from Glasgow University in 
three departments — the college, the theologi- 
cal seminary and the medical school. In his 
college class was his eminent cousin, the poet 
of his own name. He returned to his native 
place in the north of Ireland and became em- 
ployed in the double profession of preaching 
and teaching. He founded and became the 
Principal of Eich Hill Academy. It was here 
that Alexander received the rudiments of his 
education, and was prepared for college. As a 
youth he was not remarkable for his diligence 
in study, being a fond lover of nature and 
out-of-door exercise, though to manual labor 
he seems, like many other boys who afterwards 
became eminent, to have been averse. He was, 
however, both physically and mentally vigor- 
ous; his mind was alert, comprehensive and 
retentive, and the vast fund of information on 
all subjects of history and literature, in the 
use of which he showed such astonishing fa- 
cility in his later life, was largely accumulat- 
ed in these early years. He assisted his fath- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 13 

or as a teacher in the Rich Ilill Academy, at 
the same time he continued his own studies, 
under paternal tuition, and thereby developed 
his wonderful faculties of assimilating, ar- 
ranging and distributing facts and theories as 
he required them. His grasp of a subject, 
and quick power of discrimination made him 
at all times consistent with himself, for no 
idea was ready to be dealt out until it found a 
place for itself in his own system of philoso- 
phy according to the fundamental principles 
on which he rested. His education was al- 
ready a liberal and thorough one when he en- 
tered Edinburgh University m the fall of 
1808. He had started with his mother and 
brothers and sistei s for America, but the ves- 
sel was wrecked on an island off the west 
coast of Scotland. It was then, that, sitting 
on the stump of a broken mast amid the 
gloom and uncertainty of his surroundings, 
he made a covenant with God, that if he was 
rescued from the misfortunes of that day the 
services of his life would be laid at the altar 
of the Lord. How well he kept that prom- 
ise for sixty years, all the world know^s. In 
Glasgow University he was instructed by 
some of the most eminent scholars of their 
time — Young, the grammarian; Jardine, the 
logician; and Ure, the physicist. Besides 
the classic atmosphere of the University 



14 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

which he breathed, he was thrown iato inti- 
mate association with some of Glasgow's 
greatest preachers. The man whom, more 
than all others, he found congenial in religious 
matters was the eminent Greville Ewing, di- 
vine and lexicographer, who was at that time 
one of the ablest advocates of the principles 
of Christian faith and practice, then urged by 
the Haldanes. Many were the doubts and 
questionings of young Campbell — natural 
condition of mind to the young collegian when 
his intellect is stirred to its greatest activity, 
and the philosophy of his childhood is being 
reconstructed — but his doubts and question- 
ings never shook his faith in the fundamentals 
of the Christian system; they laid hold of 
the external trappings of the church which 
surrounded and obscured the orb of " the sun 
of righteousness. ' ' 

In the summer of 1809 he, with the re- 
mainder of the family which his father, who 
had come to America two years before, had 
left in his charge, sailed a second time for the 
new land across the seas, this time to reach 
his destination safely. He was nearly two 
months on the sea, landing in New York, 
September 29. That he was by nature some- 
thing of a poet, is shown by a few lines writ- 
ten during the voyage, on '* The Ocean." In 
them we see his spirit of reverence, his feel- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 15 

ing of awe in face of the powerful and grand, 
and his sense of the sublime. This was the 
character of his religious sensibilities, — it was 
the grandeur, glory and majesty of God as 
manifested in the sublime and transcendant 
excellence of Jesus Christ, our prophet, priest 
and king, which carried him to heights of pul- 
pit eloquence that have been seldom reached. 
One who has witnessed a storm at sea in the 
night time may see here the picture which he 
so thriliingly paints : — 

" When night comes on and darkness veils the skies; 
When black'ning clouds and howling storms arise: 
When dismal horror broods upon the deep, 
And awful terrors wake the mind from sleep, 
See, from the poles, the forked lightnings fly. 
And paint in solemn glares the blackening sky; 
Then from the south begin the dreadful blasts, 
Hark! how they roar amidst the groaning masts: 
See hemp and canvas to their force give way, 
And through the air in shreds and fragments stray." 

Though these lines bear the marks of the 
youthful pen, and are clothed in the style of 
the eighteenth century classicism, which was 
about that time in its death throes, they con- 
tain a vividness of drawing and vigor of 
expression that make them a credit to the 
young man, and they doubtless would have 
been received with greater favor by Francis 
Jeffrey and the Edinhurgh Revieicers^ than 
was the much berated, but triumphant Excur- 
sion. But the swing of the pendulum of 



16 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

literary taste in this century has been toward 
Wordsworth and his Lake School. 

Thomas Campbell had already, when Alex- 
nnder arrived, begun the Reformation in the 
wilds of Western Pennsylvania. The spirit of 
bigotry and sectarianism was here as exclusive 
as it was in the Old World, where there was 
so much in the traditions of the soil to 
preserve it. The spirit of Thomas Campbell 
could not but grieve at the divided and 
discordant condition of Christians in this new 
land where they certainly should have dwelt 
together in peace and harmony, being drawn 
as they were near to Nature's heart, surrounded 
by all that was wild and primeval. But they 
had brought with them the creeds which were 
made by men m theological conflict in a 
distant age and land, and which ever reopened 
the old sores, that in the forests of America 
should have been permitted to heal. To 
bring about a better understanding between 
Christians of differing orders, Thomas Camp- 
bell, with a few congenial spirits, wrote and 
published what has become famous as " The 
Declaration and Address'^ of Washington, 
Pennsylvania. It was a proposal to drop the 
denominational distinctions, such as names, 
creeds, etc., and take up the Bible as the only 
rule of faith and practice. The statement of 
Sir Thomas Browne in the Religio Medici^ 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 17 

concernino; the church, was re-adapted to the 
New World, and became, " Where the Script- 
ure speaks, we speak; where the Scripture is 
silent, we are silent." This is the only 
consistent rule for Protestants. If the reli- 
gion of the Bible is the religion of Protestants, 
what else can we say? The consistency of 
this principle was at once recognized by Alex- 
ander, and he determined to devote himself 
without pay to its advocacy. He was a young 
man, fresh from college, and the resolution 
which he here made had the appearance of the 
rashness of youth, and had we lived then we 
should have said, " A few years will cool the 
young man's ardor;" but the record of nearly 
three-score years would have falsified our 
surmise, for though the young man was 
shortly afterward offered a position of daz- 
zling prospect as Principal of a promising 
Academy in Pittsburg, at what was then an 
enormous salary — $1,000 a year — he declined 
with unshaken resolution. What the future 
had in store for him he did not know, but, 
with apostolic courage, had said, '^This one 
thing I do," and he did it; and to the day of 
his death he never received one dollar for his 
services as a preacher of the Gospel. This 
precedent which I believe was not repeated, 
but which has left its influence on the brother- 
hood, has been severely criticised. It has no 



18 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

doubt been an injury to our religious body — 
we might have been more vigorous to-day if 
he had set a different example — but that is not 
the point we are considering ; it was an act of 
noble self-sacrifice which has made the picture 
of human nature brighter in these days of 
Mammonism. But the disinterested resolu- 
tion of the young man was afterward greatly 
blessed even with the goods of this world. 

His first sermon was preached in a grove 
near Washington, Pennsylvania, to a large 
congregation. This day was the real openmg 
of his career. It not only secured for him an 
enviable and valuable reputation in the com- 
munity, but revealed to him his own powers, 
and these self-revelations have often more to 
do with our lives than the applause of the 
multitudes. '^ After the audience was dis- 
missed, there seemed to be but one opinion as 
to the qualifications of the speaker. All 
seemed to be forcibly struck with what they 
had heard. The young gazed upon the youth 
with wondering eyes, while the older members 
said one to another in subdued tones, ' Why, 
this is a better preacher than his father ! ' — 
a decision which in view of Thomas Camp- 
bell's reputation as a speaker was one of the 
highest compliments they could bestow." * 



See Richardson's *^ Memoirs of A. Campbell. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 19 

The success of this first discourse gave him 
plenty to do, and during the course of the 
first year he preached no less than one hun- 
dred and six sermons. 

On March 12, 1811, he was married to a 
refined and beautiful young lady named Mar- 
garet Brown, the only child of a wealtliy 
Virginian. In the following year, on the 
birth of their first child, the subject of infant 
baptism came up for consideration in practical 
form. Hitherto he had regarded it as a mat- 
ter only of mutual forbearance on the part of 
Christians, and as having nothing to do with 
the reformation in which he was engaged. He 
now determined, as his custom was with 
troublesome questions, to make a thorough 
study of the whole subject, and therefore put 
it beyond further perad venture. He read all 
the pedobaptist authorities he could find, but 
his mind was far from satisfied with their 
conclusions. He then read the Greek New 
Testament very carefully through, examining 
the etymological significance of the word 
baptism^ and arrived at last at the conviction 
that only the immersion of believers was 
was scriptural baptism. He and his wife and 
all his father's family were accordingly bap- 
tized in Buffalo Creek, June 12, 1812, and to 
the Baptist preacher who immersed him he 
said, ^'I will be baptized into the primitive 



20 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

Christian faith.'' He was, therefore, never a 
Baptist in a partisan sense, but from the time 
of his baptism a Christian of the apostolic 
order. But for convenience he became 
connected with the Redstone Baptist Associa- 
tion and remained so until the agitation 
following his famous sermon on the law led 
him to seek more congenial companionship in 
the Mahoning Association of Ohio. This 
memorable discourse was delivered in a grove 
on the banks of Cross Creek in the picturesque 
scenery of West Virginia. This " Sermon on 
the Law " created such subsequent excitement 
in the Baptist community that it is commonly 
regarded as the parting of the roads between 
the Baptists and Disciples. The former have, 
however, advanced to a point as far as this 
sermon. The late Dr. Jeffrey of Brooklyn, a 
leading Baptist, preached the same sermon once 
before a Baptist Association in Philadelphia 
and at another time to one in Warren, Rhode 
Island, and at both times it was received with 
profound attention and admiration. This was 
a sufficient test that, if the Baptists made that 
discourse the signal for breaking communion 
with Disciples in that day, they would not do 
it in this. 

In 1820 Campbell accepted rather reluc- 
tantly a challenge to a debate on baptism with 
a Rev. John Walker, a Presbyterian preacher. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 21 

It was his first experience in a character of 
work in which he afterward so eminently 
distinguished himself. The debate was held 
at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, and was a most obvious 
triumph for Campbell. The printed discus- 
sion went through two editions and widely 
extended the fame and influence of the risino: 
man who had already become quite generally 
known as a scholar and orator. In 1823 a 
second debate was held with another Presbyte- 
rian preacher, named McCalla, in Washington, 
Kentucky. This debate being also published, 
and the victory quite generally conceded to 
Campbell, his reputation was further extended, 
and he became favorably known to the Bap- 
tists in Kentucky and Tennessee. In the 
same year he had began the publication of 
The Christian Baptist^ a monthly religious 
journal, polemic in tone, but devoted to the 
interests of no sect, unless it was to that sect 
which was in the early days everywhere spoken 
against. The effect of this publication was 
electrical. It was just what many were pray- 
ino; for. He recoo^nizes this want from the 
first. In the preface to the first edition dated 
July 4, 1823, he sa3^s: 

''We are very certain that to such as are 
praying for illumination and instruction in 
righteousness, and not availing themselves of 
the means afforded in the Divine Word to ob- 



22 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

tain an answer to their prayers, our remarks 
on many topics will appear unjust, illiberal, and 
even heretical; and as there are so many pray- 
ing for light, and inattentive to what God has 
manifested in his word, there must be a mul- 
titude to oppose the way of truth and right- 
eousness. This was the case when God's 
Messiah, the mighty Redeemer of Israel ap- 
peared. Ten thousand prayers were daily of- 
fered for his appearance, ten thousand wishes 
expressed for his advent, ten thousand ora- 
tions pronounced respecting the glory and 
character of his reign ; and strange to tell ! 
when he appeared, the same ten thousand 
tongues were employed in his defamation ! 
Yea, they were praying for his coming when 
he stood in the midst of them, as many now 
^ are praying for light when it is in their hands. ' ' 
Ideas so bold, and language so forcible, 
could not but greatly impress the wdde-awake 
and inquiring mind of those days of theologi- 
cal shaking up. ''We know from acquaint- 
ance," said he, ''that there is a goodly num- 
ber of sensible and intelligent persons, at this 
day, entirely disgusted with many things 
called religious ; upon the whole it is an age of 
inquiry." So it was, and a magazine so 
I)ristling with striking and novel expression of 
old truths, almost forgotten, had its place at 
just that time. I continue quotmg from the 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 23 

first preface, sentences that 'Svent home," 
and do what they would, whoever read them 
could not get away from them. They were 
new, but self-evident for all that. ''We have 
been taught that we are liable to err ; we have 
found ourselves in many errors ; we candidly 
acknowledge that we have changed our views 
on many subjects, and our views have changed 
our actions." It was a new idea that views 
should have much to do with one's actions in 
theology. Many continued to practice what 
their views could hardly correspond with, and 
vice versa. That last clause rang in their ears, 
' ' Our views have changed our actions. ' ' Again, 
in the same preface, the author states that one 
of the rules of his life has been ''Never to 
hold any sentiment or proposition as more cer- 
tain than the evidence on which it rests; or, 
in other words, that our assent to a proposi- 
tion should be precisely proportioned to the 
evidence on which it rests. All beyond this 
we esteem enthusiasm — all short of it, incre- 
dulity." It would be impossible for us to 
describe the effect produced by so few words 
on the minds of those who thought on religious 
subjects. Some of his utterances were fear- 
less, even to apparent rashness, but it was the 
only kind of speech that had any place in the 
iconoclasm in which he was engaged. He 
deemed it a matter of no greater consequence 



24 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

that the heathen should be converted ''to the 
popular Christianity of these times" than 
that popular Christians themselves should be 
converted to the Christianity of the New Tes- 
tament. In these papers he loved to dwell on 
the beauty and grandeur of the Christian 
religion, and to lead his readers to a nobler 
and loftier conception of what they had before 
looked at only through their respective theo- 
logical spectacles. Bead these sublime words 
of the first article in the first issue: ''Chris- 
tianity is the perfection of that divine philan- 
thropy which was gradually developing itself 
for four thousand years. It is the bright 
effulgence of every divine attribute, mingling 
and harmonizing, as the different colors in the 
rainbow, in the bright shining after rain, into 
one complete system of perfections — the per- 
fection of GLORY to God in the highest heaven, 
the perfection of peace on earth, and the 
perfection of good will among men." 

We have not time to dwell longer on the 
contents of the Christian Baj^tist^ wonderful 
storehouse of riches. It was enlarged and 
changed into a more gentle and less polemical 
channel after a continuance of seven years, 
and named the Millennial Harbinger. The 
former was a paper for its day and hour; the 
latter, for all time. 

In 1829 the most widely known debate of 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 25 

Campbell's life took place in Cincinnati with 
the great socialist, Robert Owen of New 
Lanark, Scotland. The latter had been 
establishing his cooperative communities in 
various parts of the United States, but found 
religious principles a considerable annoyance 
to him. He, therefore, issued a challenge at 
the close of a course of lectures in New 
Orleans to the clergy in the United States to 
discuss with him in public debate the evi- 
dences of Christianity, in which he would un- 
dertake to prove ''twelve fundamental propo- 
sitions" which we have not space to enumer- 
ate, but which were calculated to make short 
work of the whole Christian religion. His 
challenge met with no acceptance until Alex- 
ander Campbell, alarmed at the situation, for 
silence on the part of the clergy would be a 
concession of weakness, inasmuch as Robert 
Owen was too eminent a man to be ignored, 
came forward and presented himself as the 
defender of the assailed religion. The debate 
lasted eight days ; it was afterward published 
in Cincinnati and republished in London, and, 
more than any other printed discussion of the 
issues between Christians and infidels it has 
served to strengthen the Christian faith. I 
need not further allude to this discussion here, 
for considerable attention is given to it in the 
papers of this book. 



26 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

la 1830 Alexander Campbell held a place 
as delegate in the most illustrious assembly 
which ever met in Virginia — the convention 
to remodel the civil constitution of the Com- 
monwealth — and in which, as delagates, were 
such statesmen as James Madison and James 
Monroe, former Presidents, Chief-Justice 
Marshall and John Randolph, of Roanoke. 

A few years later a second great debate was 
held in Cincinnati — this time with Bishop, 
afterwards Archbishop, Purcell on the issue 
between Romanism and Protestantism. The 
learning and ability here displayed on both 
sides were conspicuous. It closed with the ap- 
parent satisfaction of the friends of Purcell, 
and with great rejoicing on the part of the 
Protestants. 

In 1840 Campbell founded Bethany College 
among the romantic hills about his own home 
in West Virginia. This college under his in- 
spiratioq, attracted the young men of minds 
congenial with his own, and who revered him 
as the sage in whom dwelt learning and phi- 
losophy, from all parts of the Union, North 
and South. Here a brilliant literati discussed 
the themes of God and the universe. It was 
an educational enterprise of considerable mag- 
nitude for those days and in those regions, 
and the service that it did to the cause of the 
Reformation in that incipient stage, can not 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 27 

be overestimated. The prime movers in the 
Reformation were preeminently scholars, edu- 
cated in the best institutions of the old world. 
A more educated and brilliant trio than 
Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Walter 
Scott, a graduate of Edinburgh University, 
has seldom appeared in the history of relig- 
ious movements, and the diversity of their 
talents and characteristics, with the oneness 
of their minds in things religious, has been a 
legacy to the Disciple brotherhood that should 
be warmly cherished. The gentleness and 
sweet spirit of the learned patriarch are ours, 
and we rob ourselves of a part of our legiti- 
mate possession when we suffer these elements 
to rust in disuse. The fervid, emotional tem- 
perament of Walter Scott, secret of his won- 
derful moving power as an orator, should also 
be ours if we can possess it, for it was one of 
the elements of our early prosperity. But the 
personality of the supreme mind of the trio 
has left its impress so deeply upon us, that 
none of us need be charged to cling to the 
memory of Alexander Campbell. 

In 1843 the great debate with Rev. W. L. 
Rice, a Presbyterian, took place in Lexington, 
Kentucky, at which Hon. Henry Clay presided 
as Moderator. Throughout the debate the 
boastful manner of Mr. Rice and his readiness 
and ingenuity in reply and improvisation. 



28 ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS 

quite deceived the less intelligent listeners, 
and the Presbyterians were greatly encouraged 
with what seemed this time to have the effect 
of a victory. They eagerly purchased the 
copyright of the debate for $2,000, and began 
to publish and distribute it, but to their great 
disappointment, the printed discussion did not 
have the effect they had desired, and wherever 
it went it made converts to Campbell's views. 
Presbyterianism began to decline in Lexing- 
ton and throughout Kentucky from secessions 
to the ranks of the Disciples and Baptists, and 
has never been vigorous since. 

No view of the Reformation Campbell 
inaugurated is complete without a considera- 
tion of the great Kentucky Revival under B. 
W. Stone, which created such a sensation in 
those parts as has never been equalled in this 
country. It was a reaction from the irreligion 
which the struggles with the new country had 
brought upon those early settlers. They had 
wandered away from Christ, and this great 
revival was the loud wail or piercing cry of the 
child which has thoughtlessly wandered away 
from the side of its mother, only to suddenly 
look about and realize that she is lost. It is 
then that the child wants her mother. She 
can not be soothed with sweets, or quieted with 
toys; — she wants hei' 77iothe7\ So with these 
poor people in Kentucky and Tennessee who 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 29 

suddenly awoke to their helplessness without 
Christ. Nor could they be soothed with 
theology and creeds; they wanted to go 
directly to Christ. It is thus that the work 
of B. W. Stone ran so parallel with that of 
Alexander Campbell, though the men were 
intellectually entirely different, and the move- 
ment of the former became absorbed in that of 
the latter. I quote from " The History of 
the Presbyterian Church in the State of Ken- 
tucky '' by Dr. Robert Davidson, a professor 
at the time of its publication in 1847, in 
Transylvania Univ^ersity : '^In all the affairs 
connected with the schism (the great Eevival), 
the organization of the Springfield Presby- 
tery, and the subsequent formation of societies 
known under the various names of New 
Lights, Christians, Arians, Marshallites, and 
Stoneites, he (Stone) was the leading spirit 
until they were merged in the all-embracing 
vortex of Campbellism in 1831." 

In the summer of 1847 Campbell visited 
Europe, but we need not more than mention it 
here, for the events of this tour constitute the 
theme of the following papers. I must, how- 
ever, beg leave to quote the letter of Henry 
Clay, which Campbell carried with him. It 
is interesting both because of its author, and 
the relation it bears to the subject of this 
book. 



30 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

The Rev. Dr. A. Campbell, the bearer hereof, a 
citizen of the United States of America, residing in 
the Commonwealth of Virginia, being about to make 
a voyage to Europe and to travel particularly in 
Great Britain, Ireland and France, I take great satis- 
faction in strongly recommending him to the kind 
offices and friendly reception and treatment of all 
persons with whom he may meet and wherever he 
may go. Dr. Campbell is among the most eminent 
citizens of the United States, distinguished for his 
great learning and ability, for his successful devotion 
to the education of youth, for his piety and as the 
head and founder of one of the most important and 
respectable religious communities in the United 
States. Nor have his great talents been exclusively 
confined to the religious and literary walks in which 
he has principally moved; he was a distinguished 
member, about twenty years ago, of the convention 
called in the State of Virginia to remodel its civil 
constitution, in which, besides other eminent men, 
were ex- Presidents Madison and Monroe, and John 
Marshall, the late Chief- Justice of the United States. 

Dr. Campbell, whom I have the honor to regard 
personally as my friend, carries with him my wishes 
and my prayers for his health and happiness whilst 
abroad, and for his safe return to his country, which 
justly appreciates him so highly. H. Clay. 

Ashland, Kentucky, May, 1847. 

What the world will have to say of Alex- 
ander Campbell can not now be fully fore- 
seen, but the dawn of a brighter day for his 
memory is certainly appearing. Among the 
denominations in which a half century ago no 
one could do him justice, and remain, are 
preachers to-day who dwell in pulpit lectures 
on his life, and, in glowing terms, give him 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 31 

rank amono^ the old world reformers.* We 
are truly coming to a juster appreciation of a 
hero ''of whom the world was not worthy." 



*See sermon on "Campbell, the Disciple," by Dr. 
Kerr B. Tapper of Denver, Colorado, in recent issue 
of the Christian Standard, 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELLS TOUR IN 
SCOTLAND. 



HOW HE IS REMEMBERED BY THOSE WHO 
SAW HIM THEN. 



I. 

About forty-five years ago Alexander Camp- 
bell, then in the ripeness of his age, with a 
life of immense labors and wonderful fruits 
behind him, but yet in the vigor of his intel- 
lect left his adopted America for a tour in the 
old world, the purpose of which was as much 
to disseminate the principles, to the advocacy 
of which he had dedicated his life, as to recu- 
perate his relaxing strength. This tour by 
some of its unfortunate circumstances has 
become famous to all who know anything of 
the life of the man. It was the writer's good 
fortune while in Scotland a few months ago to 
meet two gentlemen whose reminiscences on 



34 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

this subject are interesting, one an aged kirk 
of Scotland clergyman who has a vivid 
remembrance of Alexander Campbell in his 
visit to Scotland, who heard him speak several 
times and bears the picture on his mind of the 
o'reat American reformer as if he had but seen 
him yesterday. He is familiar with every 
circumstance of his accusation and imprison- 
ment, with all its causes and details. But 
before entering into this description of our 
venerable Scottish friend, let us rehearse 
briefly the commonest outlines of these events 
as we have them from our biographical 
sources. 

When Alexander Campbell left this country, 
he carried with him the highest respects and 
honor of a great nation. He was known and 
esteemed by the greatest Americans of his 
day, and was received with distinction by the 
representatives of our government abroad, 
being the guest, while in London, of Bancroft, 
the historian, the minister plenipotentiary at 
the Court of St. James. President and 
founder of one of our considerable colleges, a 
statesman with our Madisons, Monroes, Mar- 
shalls and Randolphs, the father of what 
Henry Clay then termed ''one of the most 
important and respectable religious communi- 
ties in the United States," he could not but 
receive the respectful attention of the people 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 35 

of Europe. In all parts of England he was 
received with honor, addressing large audi- 
ences in Chester, Liverpool, London, Leices- 
ter, Manchester, Newcastle and many other 
important cities. He was the most interesting 
American of his time outside of the circle of 
politics, and it is wonderful how wide his fame 
had spread on the other side of the Atlantic. 
When Beecher was lecturing in England in 
behalf of the American Union, he was in 
many places but little known — even before his 
great Liverpool address he was advertised in 
the Liverpool papers as a ''certain Baptist 
preacher from America." The great audi- 
ences that assembled to hear him, knew him 
chiefly as a propagandist of abolition doctrine. 
But not so with the subject of this sketch. 
In no town in England was the name of the 
famed ''American arch-heretic" unknown. 
The fact that the people who held his teaching 
were distinguished to the world only as they 
wore his name bears record to the greatness 
of his fame. The vast multitudes that filled 
the largest halls to hear him were not attract- 
ed as in the case of Beecher by their interest 
in a peculiar political crisis or the definiteness 
of some theme to be discussed — Alexander 
Campbell had no one definite theme to which 
he held himself nor political theory to be ad- 
vocated — but by the peculiar interest which 



36 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

people will always have in a man who has pre- 
scribed the thought of thousands and exposed 
some of what Carlyle might paradoxically 
call the '^ eternal unveracities." To such a 
man the English people (for they are hero- 
worshipers) will pay homage. And it was 
quite generally accepted throughout English 
speaking nations that some of the ''eternal 
unveracities " had been brouo^ht to lio^ht under 
the pick of this great American. He had laid 
the ax at the root of more trees than one in the 
woods of ecclesiasticism and the light from 
above was beo:innino: to shine in with no little 
discomfort to the promoters of darkness, but 
to the great satisfaction of many that dwelt 
therein. He was also well known in England 
as the Father of a marvellously growing and 
intelligent religious body in America with 
many adherents in Great Britain. It was, 
then, the personality of the man that drew 
his great houses. 

I pause here to observe that the fame of 
our reformer has greatly waned since his 
death. He is not known so widely now as he 
was known fifty years ago. Houghton, 
Mililin & Co., in a recent series on great 
American reformers have not a name on the 
list that stands for so much in the religious 
thought of this age as that of Alexander 
Campbell but his name is not there. Wash- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 37 

ington Gladden in a recent series of lectures 
on great reformers stops when he arrives at 
Campbell. He has Channing and others but 
Campbell is not there. We as a people are 
much to blame for this. We will preach in 
our pulpits on Wycliffe and Luther and Bun- 
yan but we are cautious in the mention of one 
who has been of more immediate service to us 
than all these. Many of our own people 
hardly know the name of this century's great- 
est champion of religious truth. Lest some 
few should call us '' Campbellites " we would 
suffer the name of a great man to die. He 
was, therefore, far better known when he was 
a living actor on life's stage than now. The 
contrary is true of Wesley and others whose 
lives are better and more widely known now 
than they were in the time of their lives, be- 
cause of the loyalty of their followers. If 
our silence concerning the great man before us 
is to the single glory of the Christ it is a si- 
lence worthily intended, but the recognition 
and praise of vnlue in men can never dero- 
gate from the honor of the perfect man — the 
world will be better and the picture of human 
nature richer for the knowledge of its truly 
great ones. 

To return to my rambles let me state that 
when Alexander Campbell visited England and 
Scotland his fame had long preceded him — 



38 ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS 

interest in him was so general that even his 
political opinions, on slavery, and other topics 
were retailed and discussed. This brings us 
to our narrative. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 39 



II. 

On a bright July morning, I left St. Pan- 
creas station, London, for Scotland. The 
great train with its numerous coaches stood on 
the track for at least thirty minutes. A 
tumultuous crowd is on the platform ; some m 
outing suits are going off to the lakes for a 
few days or weeks, others are seeing friends 
away. Some are excited, nervous, rushing 
about, and wasting time by hurrying — now 
they find themselves in a wrong carriage, and 
now they have forgotten somethmg. Others 
are cool-headed and self-possessed, they are 
masters of the situation, they make no mistake, 
they forget nothing; they find themselves in 
the rio^ht carriao^e with all their luo:orao'e with 
them. Among these latter, I noticed a 
venerable looking ocntleman with lono; hair 
that came down nearly to his shoulders and 
white as snow; he was tall and erect, the 
benignant smile of an English parson upon his 
smooth face. I watched him as he walked to 



40 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

the book stall and purchased the Religious 
Beview of Reviews. Then he turned and 
came directly toward my compartment, and as 
he approached I saw he wore the clerical 
dress, which confirmed me in my surmise that 
he was an English clergyman. This was 
Goldsmith's veritable Dr. Primrose raised 
from the dead as^ain. He entered my com- 
partment, which I had been occupying alone, 
and seating himself opposite me, began read- 
ing the magazine I had seen him buy. Soon 
the bustle and hurry on the platform subsided, 
our tickets were examined by the guards, and 
the train pulled out. 

I settled myself down to reading the Tiines^ 
and noticed nothing more until we were flying 
through one of the most perfectly cultivated 
and beautiful pieces of farming country I had 
ever seen. 

We were approaching Bedford and, as if by 
a mysterious influence, my thoughts began to 
turn upon Sloughs of Despond, Valleys of 
Humiliation, Hills of Difficulty, and Delecta- 
ble Mountains. It had been many years since 
I had last read Pilgrim's Progress, but all the 
scenes in the wanderings of poor Christian 
and the picture of Bedford jail now flashed 
upon my mind as I had always seen them in 
imagination. But here I now was in the hal- 
lowed city of great Bunyan's habitation. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 41 

There, at some distance from the raUroad 
track, stands what remains of Bedford jail, 
though much unlike the " Bedford gaol " of 
my childhood's fancy. There, within those 
dreary walls was a great spirit confined — no, I 
will not say confined^ for a great spirit is not 
to be held within walls of stone, — from those 
dreary walls rather a great light shone to the 
everlasting gratitude of many that have dwelt 
in darkness. It was not difficult now for my 
friend and me to fall into conversation — here 
was a matter of deep mutual interest. I was 
thinking of Bunyan, and I knew he was. 
Bunyan's imprisonment became the subject of 
our conversation. 

He being, as I supposed, an Anglican 
clergyman, I was cautious as to what I said 
about the injustice of Bunyan's treatment by 
the Church of England. I was, therefore, 
quite surprised when he not only expressed his 
disapproval of the English church in this 
matter, but criticised it very unfavorably in 
many others — in matters of doctrme, worship 
and ecclesiastical organization, ending his re- 
mark by saying it was '^but the Eomish 
church with an English name and the English 
sovereign for its pope." It was now plain to 
my mind that he was a non-conformist. I 
felt more interest in him than ever, and entered 
with orreater freedom into the discussion of 



42 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

matters of religion. I began such an argu- 
ment against church establishments generally 
as I thought would just please my venerable 
dissenter, that, therefore, I might place my- 
self still more in his favor and be better able 
to learn from him all he knew of the religious 
condition of Great Britain. 

But I was not half through with my tirade 
when I saw by his countenance that my ideas 
were not at all tasteful to him, so closing my 
little speech at the first stopping place, I 
paused to hear the effect I had produced. 
Imagine then my confusion when he began an 
earnest, but mild argument in support of 
church establishments, maintainmg that only 
by them can the strongest types of national 
character be produced. "Non-conformity 
produces no really great men," said he, ''it is 
out of the current of national life. The 
great men among the dissenters, the Miltons, 
the Wesley s, and even the founders of your 
own Puritan New England were reared within 
the influence, and educated at the colleges of 
church establishments;" and so he went on. 
I felt myself out at sea. I at first had taken 
my friend for an Established church clergy- 
man, then for a non-conformist minister, but 
here he is neither a churchman nor a dis- 
senter and yet a wearer of the cloth. 

What could he be? He was not a Catholic 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 43 

priest, for but a moment ago he criticised the 
Anglican church as being but little better than 
the Romish. We were now just pulling out 
of Bedford, and our conversation drifted 
around again to Bunyan's imprisonment. 

I observed that it was a strange coincidence 
that since the time of the Apostles, the world's 
greatest preachers and reformers have, some 
time in their lives, suffered imprisonment for 
their doctrine's sake — Luther, in the castle of 
Wartburg (though a friendly incarceration). 
Bunyan, the great Baptist, spent twelve years 
of his life here in Bedford jail. Wesley, the 
founder of Methodism, in a tour through 
Scotland, was falsely charged and thrown into 
prison, and Alexander Campbell, the American 
Reformer, suffered a similar injustice on a 
similar tour. As I spoke the name of Alex- 
ander Campbell, his eyes sparkled with inter- 
est. ''Alexander Campbell!" said he, ''yes, 
one of the world's truly great ones — one of 
the strong men that God so seldom makes. 
Yes, I think I ought to know something about 
him in his visit to Scotland; I heard him 
speak there several times — I had the honor of 
meeting him." I saw by my friend's animated 
countenance that he had hit upon one of his 
favorite topics. My own interest was intense. 
Here w^as a man who could tell me what I 
could not read about one of my great heroes. 



44 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

I told him how I was interested in his reminis- 
cences and left him to his narrative. He 
leaned back into the corner of the carriage, 
and gazing for a moment out of the window, 
began : 

''The summer of 1847 is one long for me to 
remember. I had just finished my education, 
having but the previous June completed my 
theological coarse in the University of Edin- 
burgh. I had been settled in a wealthy and 
comfortable parish in a small town, a short dis- 
tance from the city, with a very good living. 
All I could ask for was mine. Matters of 
theology were now of especial interest to me. 
I was a radical adherent to the National Kivh 
of Scotland J but like all young collegians, I 
was always ready to hear something new. 

''Religious Scotland was much interested in 
the two great movements then in progress in 
America — the New England anti-creed ration- 
alism and Alexander Campbell's 'anti-creed 
iconoclasm,' as I often heard it called. I knew 
little more of Campbell and his teachings than 
what I could learn from the religious press, 
and this was never satisfactory. The view of 
him that generally prevailed was that of a 
heretic to all the traditions of the church and 
the doctrines of the scripture, such as the 
divine Trinity, the Holy Spirit and many 
others which we orthodox Scots held as vital. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 45 

His great debate with Robert Owen in defense 
of the Christian religion, however, was so able 
and uncompromising as to the fundamental 
truths of Christianity that he came to be 
looked upon with greater respect and even 
gratitude by many clergymen of all faiths. 
But it served to make many fear him the more 
and the i\ews of his presence in Scotland was 
received with no little apprehension on the 
part of the most of us. A large number of 
intelligent people in Edinburgh regarded his 
religious views with favor. Several members 
of the Congregational and Free churches had 
recently gone over to the small band of his 
followers in Edinburgh. Many of the Uni- 
versity students, influenced by Campbellistic 
views, were beginning to make dangerous in- 
vestigations, and it was with considerable ef- 
fort that we were able to subdue the cry for 
'restoration' in our own congregations. Such 
questions as 'Where is your scriptural author- 
ity?' and such demands as "Give me a 'Thus 
saith the Lord' for that" were becoming quite 
troublesome, especially as they came from 
our parishioners whose questionings we had al- 
ways felt bound to satisfy. It was a very in- 
opportune time for this greatest living 
preacher of heresy, who was the author of the 
very notions among our people that were most 
threatening, to visit Scotland. I was myself, 



46 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

though young, conservatively orthodox and 
fearful of the honor and stability of the doc- 
trines of John Knox. Our great solicitude 
was how we might detract the public interest 
in Mr. Campbell from his religious views and 
fasten it somewhere else, or how we might en- 
tangle him in the discussion of other and un- 
important questions and such as wouj^d destroy 
his influence with the Scottish people. You 
are surprised that we ministers of the gospel 
should stoop to such unfairness, but such 
things we deemed justifiable when the very 
foundations of Christian orthodoxy were im- 
perilled." 

'^Yes," I soliloquized, "Orthodoxy! oh 
orthodoxy ! how many crimes have been com- 
mitted in thy name ! ' ' 

"One Friday evening," continued my 
friend, " as I sat in my study, I was surprised 
by a call from the Congregational preacher of 
the town, a man named Kennedy, with whom 
I had not been on the most intimate terms 
because of the natural hostility between our 
cono:re2:ations. I knew that some relio^ious 
trouble was brewing, but such things were so 
common in those days of great interest in 
religious questions that I thought little of it. 
I took no papers except religious monthly 
publications, and was, therefore, out of the 
current of events. My interest was awakened, 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 47 

aad I waited for my fellow preacher to state 
his mission. He came soon to the point, as 
he was an abrupt man, and broke out some- 
thing like this : ' Scothind is on the ver^e of 
falling into the most damnable heresy. The 
time-honored faith of John Knox is to be 
tainted by the blackest Antinomianism. Alex- 
ander Campbell has been in England for a 
month, and is within the borders of Scotland 
now. He arrives in Edinburgh to-morrow, 
and next week has appointments in Waterloo 
Rooms, and will do the best he can, with the 
assistance of the Prince of Darkness, to 
destroy our religious peace. Several of my 
parishioners whom I had placed most depend- 
ence upon have left us and gone over to the 
Campbellites. Many of your members, 
though you may not know it, are tainted with 
these doctrines. Edinburgh is more disturbed 
than the outlying towns, and if this man 
preaches for one week to the audiences in 
Waterloo Rooms, which will be sure to flock 
to see him, notwithstanding all that may be 
done to discourage them, there will be greater 
sorrow in the national kirk than she has 
known since the Disruption four years ago, 
and greater than she can stand at this juncture. 
Our duty is to devise means and work together 
against a common enemy. It is a fact that 
Mr. Campbell comes from Virginia where all 



48 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

are slave-holders, and it is reported that he is 
a defender of that institution. Now, this is 
the issue we must catch him on. Scotland 
will give no hearing to any man who will 
apologize for man-stealing. A committee of 
clergymen has been called for Monday after- 
noon in Edinburgh, and as you would under- 
stand best the sentiment of the students, we 
want you to take your place as one of this 
committee to determine what to do in this 
emergency.' 

" Having said all this, he did not wait for 
a direct answer, but in his abrupt manner left 
me to myself." 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 49 



III. 

We left our venerable friend just where his 
strange consultation with the Rev. Mr. Kenne- 
dy closed — a consultation on the best means 
of preventing the mischief which the great 
American reformer was likely to cause m the 
religious systems then most popular in Scot- 
land — a consultation which brouo^ht too^ether 
antaofonistic teachers to fio^ht a common ene- 
my. This was the oft-repeated story of 
Scotland over again. 

" Rival clans with one another fight, 
Till Norsemen boats along the coast they see ; 

Then feuds aside are laid, they all unite 
To meet their enemy." 

Mr. Kennedy had held his own as an. Inde- 

pendeut minister by the side of his friend's 

established kirk. This he did not fear, 

but Campbell's doctrines from far-away 

America had already crossed the ocean and 

broken into his congregation, taking from 

him some of his best members. And here 

was Alexander Campbell himself ready to 



50 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

upturn all Edinburgh, and with Edinburgh all 
rehgious Scotland which took its light from 
that intellectual and literary center. And 
this at the time of a great theological ferment 
when the restoration of the prhnitive church 
was the spirit of the age and there was a gen- 
eral seeking for the old paths. Verily it was 
a time for apprehensions and we must not 
surprise ourselves that our friends across the 
sea, so zealous for their ancient faith, were 
busy at this time. 

Our friend the narrator, whom, by the way, 
we shall call the Eev. John Laird, continued 
his interesting story : 

'* When Mr. Kennedy left my study after 
the consultation which I have described I 
devoted myself to devising some means by 
which the religious arisings, which I knew 
would follow Alexander Campbell's advent 
into Edinburgh, might be prevented. To 
prevent them would be much easier than to 
suppress them when they had come up. This 
was the important question. It did not occur 
to me that there might be anything which we 
could bring personally againt Mr. Campbell 
which would prejudice him in the eyes of 
Scotchmen. I had always heard of him as an 
earnest and disinterested preacher of the gos- 
pel, who, though the cause of great mischief 
by his teachings, was yet in all his circum- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 51 

stances in life unassailable. I was, therefore, 
in considerable trouble of mind when one of 
my parishioners, a kind, fatherly man of un- 
usual intelligence and much piety, came in. 
His name was Solomon Morton. The only 
fault I had in him was the very thing which 
now Avas troubling me most. He was an ad- 
mirer of Campbell, had first become acquaint- 
ed with him by reading the Owen debate, was 
a reader through a friend of the Millennial 
Harbinger' and had some other of Campbell's 
works in his library. He had never advocated 
Campbellistic principles openly, though I knew 
that he privately indorsed the most of them. 
He had not been with me long when he in- 
formed me of what I had already learned, 
that Alexander Campbell w^as to give a 
course of lectures on the Christian religion 
in Waterloo Eooms, Edinburgh, the following 
week, and he hoped I could attend them; that 
he was going to attend himself and placed 
great expectations on seeing and hearing a 
man whom he considered one of the sfreatest 
of the time. He said he could not but dis- 
sent from some of his views, but on the whole 
he considered his work of mestimable service 
to the Christian world, in presenting their re- 
ligion in a new and brighter light, so that it 
stood out clear, distinct and rational, and in 
teaching the w^orld a lesson no man had ever 



52 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

tauofht before — that the Bible was a book of 
definite doctrine and that it may be intelli- 
gently read. Many other things I listened to, 
but this was enough to fulfill my darkest ap- 
prehensions. Here was one of my own par- 
ishioners who could henceforth be counted 
upon as a genuine Campbellite. How many 
more there were in my congregation I did not 
know; how many there were in the churches 
scattered through Scotland I could not tell. 
When my friend continued and told me how 
general these doctrines were becoming in 
Bible-reading Scotland, my fears indeed ran 
high. Poor National Kirk! Another split 
she could not stand. From now on 1 was the 
sworn enemy of a man I had never seen, and 
who had never done me harm. So far it 
had not for an instant occurred to me that 
perhaps this man was right, that he had a 
case of his own. I was young and impetuous; 
if I had been turned his way, I would have 
been his loudest follower, but I had turned 
my face away from him and my prejudice 
was against him. 

" My brother Morton did not stop with his 
high expression of Mr. Campbell's services to 
religion and the Bible, but mentioned many 
things of his practical Christianity which I had 
not known before. One of these was that he 
never accepted anything for his services in 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 53 

behalf of the gospel, but being a wealthy 
Virginia landowner, he was able to devote the 
whole of his time and much of his means in 
support of the principles of his Eeformation. 
Here was the point on which hung all the 
subsequent trouble. Campbell was a Virgini- 
an and a weathy landowner, and therefore, 
without doubt, a slave-holder. This was in 
accord with what Kennedy had said, and it was 
just what we wanted. Scotland so overflowing 
just at this time with the most radical anti- 
slavery sentiment, would never tolerate a man 
who had anything to do with slavery. My 
friend soon left me, and I immediately wrote 
a note to Rev. James Robertson who was one 
of the few who were to meet and talk over 
any way of destroying the effect of Mr. 
Campbell's religious notions on the people of 
Edinburgh, and who was president of the 
Anti-Slavery Society, to ascertain, if possible, 
whether or not Campbell was a slave-holder, 
or what his ideas were on the subject. Our 
meeting and consultation as appointed was 
held in Edinburgh. Reverends Robertson, 
Kennedy and myself and many other clergy- 
men were present, and as care had been exer- 
cised in selecting them, we were all intent 
upon the same aim, to shut Alexander Camp- 
bell out of Scotland. Mr. Robertson had not 
yet found out anything about Campbell's 



54 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

position on slavery, other than that 
he had been an owner of slaves and 
had liberated them, but that he was to 
some extent an apologist for the institution. 
This information immediately disarmed some 
of us, and we were compelled, in the sight of 
fairness, to say that if this man had freed his 
slaves, he could not be the object of attack 
along that line. We, therefore, dissented from 
any further movement against him in this di- 
rection, unless sufficient justification could be 
found for it in fact. But Mr. Robertson and 
Mr. Kennedy were very rabid and were inclined 
to think that condoning an evil was as censur- 
able as actual guilt. They attributed to him 
sinister motives for liberating his own slaves, 
and advocated instant advertisement of him as 
a man-stealer. But against this we still em- 
phatically protested. At last Mr. Robertson 
and Mr. Kennedy, who held to this as their 
only rope, suofgested sending a committee of 
three to Mr. Campbell after his arrival, and 
finding out what his sentiments concerning 
slavery were. This we all assented to as fair 
and right. Mr. Robertson, Mr. Kennedy and 
another clergyman whose name I have for- 
gotten, were appointed as this committee. 

''One evening, shortly after, I went again to 
Edinburgh to learn the state of things, and 
was met at every turn with large placards, 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 55 

printed in crimson letters: 'Citizens of Edin- 
burgh ! Beware ! Alexander Campbell of 
America has been a slaveholder himself, and 
is yet a defender of man-stealers.' 

''These immense bills were stuck up in 
every public place in the city. Excitement 
was great ; groups of people were seen stand- 
ing everywhere, talking about Alexander 
Campbell, America and slavery. The tide had 
been turned in our favor. Few were the 
words that any one spoke in defense of one 
who was so branded. Occasionally a word of 
disapproval of such a contemptible manner of 
treating a stranger, whoever he was, was ex- 
pressed, but on the whole the excitement was 
loud against the great American." 



56 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 



IV. 

The evening of August 9, 1847, was a 
summer night such as drew out of their homes 
all classes of the whole city's population. 
The Scotch people are especially noted as a 
deliberative race. Questions which we would 
look upon as of little interest they enter into 
with earnestness. But upon this occasion the 
excitement was especially intense and discus- 
sions unusually loud. The anti-slavery fer- 
mentation was now swollen to its largest 
dimension, the religious state of Scotland was 
ready for such a convulsion as Alexander 
Campbell was capable and likely to produce, 
and he was, with many of the best and most 
enlightened, immensely popular. Any more 
attention turned into the channel of religion 
would have resulted in quite a general over- 
flow of banks and boundaries ; the same ex- 
citement turned into the anti-slavery channel 
would result only in a harmless social ebulli- 
tion. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 57 

''I looked then," continued my venerable 
narrator, ''upon our calumnious misrepresent- 
ations with some complacency and self-justi- 
fication. But this is a night I shall not soon 
forget. I remember passing down the West 
Bow to Grassmarket, and there was a vast 
crowd gathered together before one of these 
flaming placards, and I heard some one saying 
above the noise of the multitude that 'no 
horse-whipping man-stealer and slave-traf- 
ficker, whether he disguised himself in the 
garb of a minister or not, should be permitted 
to sleep one night in the city of Edinburgh.' 
To this I heard many loud aflirmative re- 
sponses. It was now that the wickedness of 
what we had done dawned full upon me. 
Here was a man, for aught I knew, might be 
godly and honest, abused and shamefully mis- 
represented — a man who deserved the highest 
commendation for his action in the very thing 
for which he was so grossly maligned and 
spoken against. We cried loudly for aboli- 
tion, but what slaves had we ever freed? 
This man had no anti-slavery harangues to of- 
fer, but he, though an owner of a large 
plantation of them, had executed abolition in 
his own household — yes, more than this, he 
had educated his slaves and sent them forth 
with the legacies that are greater than simple 
freedom — the Christian gospel and civilized 
citizenship. 



58 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

"I could stand it no longer, and in the im- 
pulsiveness of my younger days, I started to 
edge my way into the crowd, that I might tell 
them the whole truth, and show them where 
the shame and evil really lay, when whom 
should I see coming toward me but the Eev. 
James Robertson himself, who recognized me 
immediately, and approached me smilingly. 

" 'The thing is working well, isn't it,' 
said he. 

'' 'Yes,' I responded, 'but I'm ashamed of 
the whole business, and have the strongest 
mind in the world to get right up here and 
tell all these poor deluded idiots the whole 
truth of the matter.' 

"'Pshaw! pshaw! brother Laird, you're 
beside yourself. We've held ourselves within 
the bounds of truth. And at any rate it was 
necessary for us to present this thing in this 
way, or who knows but that this man Camp- 
bell would have torn the National Kirk and all 
other churches from centre to circumfer- 
ence?' 

" 'If the National Kirk must live only by 
damning the reputations of good men by the 
blackest misrepresentations, then I say she 
should die. If she can not live as a Christian 
church, embodying the principles of Christ, 
then she should not live at all.' 

" 'Tut? tut! my dear boy. You're young 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 59 

yet. A few years will bring you about all 
ri^ht. And really I have not the least doubt 
that Campbell is a bad man. There are many 
very dark stories that have reached me con- 
cerning him from America.' 

" 'What are some of them?' I asked. 

" 'Oh, well, they are various in nature, and 
I have not the least question of their truth- 
fulness, for I find them in some of the most 
reliable American journals and in letters from 
different individuals.' 

" 'Name some of those journals. Perhaps 
I shall find them taken at the University Lib- 
rary. I am seeking for the facts in this case. 
If Alexander Campbell is a bad man, I want 
to know it. If he is not, I shall take no 
more part m this persecution.' 

" 'I can not refer you definitely to the exact 
names of these papers. You would not likely 
find them at the University. But if I am not 
mistaken, there is a religious paper published 
in Washington, which speaks of the Camp- 
bellites in very harsh terms, and makes very 
unsavory allusions to Mr. Campbell himself. 
At any rate, my dear boy, we are in God's 
work — saving the religious peace of Scotland 
and promoting the cause of human liberty.' 

" 'Yes, but we are using the devil's way of 
doing it, and sooner or later we shall have to 
answer for all this.' 



60 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

^'With these words I left him." 

I pause here to advert to the consultation 
which the committee of three, composed of 
Robertson, Kennedy and a gentleman named 
Hunter, had with Alexander Campbell in the 
afternoon of this same day. You will remem- 
ber that the Anti-Slavery Society, a few of 
whose members met on this same afternoon to 
take measures to destroy Campbell's influence 
in Scotland, deputed this committee to visit 
him at the earliest possible moment, to learn 
and publish the facts in his slavery record, and 
his present feelings toward the institution. 
This committee went immediately to Mr. 
Campbell, apparently to pay hhn their re- 
spects. Their courtesy and the lines into 
which they directed his conversation were de- 
signed to put him at his ease, and entrap him 
by the unguarded utterances that any man 
would be likely in such circumstances to make. 
They therefore so planned their questions and 
remarks as to encourage him into a justifica- 
tion of the slave traflic ; but in this they failed, 
for he very positively condemned it, saying it 
had wrought untold sorrow and remained the 
''largest, blackest spot upon the American es- 
cutcheon." He resetted that the traffic had 
been ever begun, and said he had always ad- 
vocated the emancipation of slaves by the 
owners themselves, and had set them the ex- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 61 

ample by freeing his own slaves after educat- 
ing them in the gospel and good citizenship. 

The committee felt greatly baffled in this 
business. It was surely not possible to make 
out any case on Mr. Campbell's slavery record, 
nor even his present position on the question. 
They next drew him out on the ideas of the 
red radical abolitionists, who were then quite 
generally looked upon in this country as 
fanatics, and with a great deal of justice. To 
Mr. Campbell as well as to most other great 
men of his time their extreme notions were 
both distasteful and visionary. And looking 
back upon them from this advanced ground we 
can not see that they really played any great 
part in the destruction of the institution of 
slavery. It would have taken a long time for 
the eloquence of Wendell Phillips and William 
Lloyd Garrison to have persuaded the South- 
ern slaveholders to emancipate, or to have 
convinced the United States government that 
it would be an act of political wisdom to for- 
cibly break those chains of bondage. It was 
a great civil crisis that compelled the emanci- 
pation of the slaves of this country, and that 
only after sore trouble and deep deliberation, 
and with many misgivings and misapprehen- 
sions. 

Mr. Campbell spoke his mind freely in dis- 
approval of the course taken by the extreme 



62 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

abolitionists. He thought their efforts could 
come to no good and were calculated to. throw 
the nation into a civil and sectional war and 
perhaps destroy the nation. He deplored the 
interference of British societies in the Amer- 
ican situation as causmg more harm than all 
the good they could do. He even remarked 
that the relation of master and servant was 
not of itself sinful — that the Scriptures did 
not condemn it, but even recognized it. It was, 
however, though lawful, not expedient nor 
just, and he regretted its existence for many 
reasons, moral, political and social. 

The committee, though considerably handi- 
capped, resolved on making their fight against 
the great preacher, whose influence upon the 
religious public of Scotland they now, after 
having been for an hour in his presence, so 
greatly feared, upon this ground, for it was 
this or nothing — they had no other. In a few 
hours therefore after this pleasant and friend- 
ly chat the city of Edinburgh was aflame with 
the fiery posters we have called attention to. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 63 



V. 

The excitement on the streets of Edinburgh 
did not subside for several days. It was such 
as was calculated to make it not only unpleas- 
ant, but to a certain degree perilious for 
Campbell to remain in the city. My friend 
informs me that he, following the advice of 
his friends, took advantage of the intensity of 
the feeling against him to go to Dundee where 
he filled certain appointments that had been 
made for him. And that the truth might be 
fully known, he here wrote a letter to the Ed- 
inburgh Journal for publication, the purpose 
of which was to set himself right in the eyes 
of the Scotch public, by making known the 
facts of his slavery record, and the opinions 
he then held on the slavery question. 

The editor of the Journal^ who was closely 
connected with, and in the control of the anti- 
Campbell committee, refused to publish the 
letter. Several days passed in which Camp- 
bell was speaking in Dundee and elsewhere. 



64 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

but Edinburo:h had not vet resumed her usual 
quiet. Misrepresentations had been freely 
manufactured and floated by his enemies, and 
contrary to the wishes of his most solicitous 
friends, that he should not yet appear before 
an Edinburgh audience, he determined to wait 
no longer. He had announcements made for 
his next appointment in Waterloo Rooms. 
This is the substance of my information as I 
received it from my friend. I now follow 
him again in his narrative : 

"It was with grave apprehension that I 
read the announcement that Campbell would 
fill his appointment in Waterloo Rooms for 
Wednesday evening. I knew something of 
the state of feeling against him, which I 
feared that he did not know himself. I 
almost decided to write him warning, but I 
knew he had his friends who would surely be 
as wary and as careful for his welfare as I 
could possibly be. I greatly admired his 
courage, but I questioned his wisdom. He 
was no doubt a great man, and possessed a 
wonderful power over audiences, but he would 
find that the Scotch people are not easily 
played upon by the orator's skill. His fiery 
eloquence (for so I had imagined it) might 
very well avail him in flighty and unstable 
America, but in Scotland it might work to his 
disadvantage. An orator may play upon the 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 65 

Irish passions and fill a mob with fire and 
slauo:hter by the inflection of a word, or the 
skillful manipulation of the tone of his voice, 
but the Scotch people are moved only by the 
bare recital of actual injustice or the violation 
of an eternal principle of right. They are of 
a cold metaphysical turn of mind." 

I am here reminded of an incident in the 
life of William Hazlitt. 

Once in a heated discussion with Charles 
Lamb's brother, the latter in a moment of 
anger, struck him over the eye and knocked 
him down. His friends immediately came to 
his assistance and raising him from the floor 
bruised and bleeding, endeavored to console 
him. 

" Oh, I don't mind anything of that kind,'^ 
he responded. ''Nothing ever affects me 
but an abstract idea." So it is with the 
Scotch people. They are more inflamed at 
the violation of an abstract principle than they 
would be at a blow in the face. I am speak- 
ing hyperbolically. Slavery was a matter of 
principle with them, and no man who stood as 
slavery's champion, could win their favor. 

" They had been aroused against Alexander 
Campbell, and more than the skill of an ora- 
tor would be required to turn them. His 
record on slavery had, I knew, been honorable 



66 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

and philanthropic, but the placards and news 
paper articles were, strictly speaking, founded 
upon truth, though, in spirit, malicious mis- 
representations of it. But nothing less than 
a bare denial of the facts upon which these 
accusations rested, would satisfy a Scotch 
audience. Attempts at explanation and apol- 
ogy would only make matters worse. I 
feared the issue of this thing. The same day 
that I noticed the announcement that upon 
Wednesday evening Mr. Campbell would 
speak in Waterloo Eooms, I saw brother Mor- 
ton. He came to my study as he said to 
counsel with me. He always came to ^coun- 
sel' with me when he thought I deserved some 
reproof, or might benefit by a suggestion. 
His spirit was so fatherly and gentle that I 
was always glad to see him come. Unusual 
gentleness marked his countenance this time. 
That he was uneasy, and in trouble could be 
plainly seen, and the cause of it was not hard 
to guess. His hero, a man in whom he 
placed the most absolute faith, and whom he 
knew to be more than innocent of the malig- 
nant accusations which were brought against 
him, was now enduring the basest persecutions 
that had been heaped upon any religious 
teacher since the days of prelacy, and this, 
by his own Presbyterian Scotland. And these 
persecutions he had learned, were partly due 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 67 

to the unrighteous activity of his own pastor. 
Poor brother Morton ! This was cause enough 
to him for sorrow and disappointment in 
human nature. But more than this was trou- 
bling him. It had been whispered around 
through the parish that Deacon Morton was 
the champion of Alexander Campbell, and 
^ince Alexander Campbell was the champion 
of slavery, what could brother Morton be him- 
self, but an apologist for a wicked institution? 
Others who had before been favorable to 
Campbell and his teachings on religion, were 
now quiet, and brother Solomon, who bad ex- 
ercised more valor than discretion, was likely 
to be taken in hand and disciplined by the 
Kirk session for heresy, and perhaps deprived 
of his office in the deaconate, which he prided 
himself to have held for thirty years. It had 
never been his thought to leave the National 
Kirk, nor had it ever occurred to him that in 
Bible-loving Scotland he could be censured for 
holding doctrines which the word of God 
plainly taught — much less disciplined for 
holding such doctrines by the church which 
rested upon the creed that made the Bible the 
only rule of faith and practice for Christians. 
He had, nevertheless, been accused of heresy, 
and would likely be required to vindicate him- 
self at the church court. But such a trial was 
the least of his troubles. He was more solic- 



68 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

itous now for the welfare of the great man 
who was at this time the object of so many 
poisoned arrows." 

'' 'Brother Laird,' said he, when he had 
seated himself, 'May the Lord have mercy on 
the villifiers of this good man, for if ever sin- 
ners should cry for mercy, they should. 
" Do not bear false witness against thy neigh- 
bor," said God. May he take pity on those 
of his professed servants who have forgotten 
those words of his everlasting commandment. 
You are young, you may be forgiven for the 
part you have played in this dishonorable busi- 
ness. The effect of this evil day will require 
the years of eternity to measure.' 

" ' Brother Morton,' said I, 'I am as indig- 
nant at the issue of this business as you can 
be, and in much greater sorrow for it, because 
my hand was in it. I am in great apprehen- 
sion for Mr. Campbell in his determination to 
appear before an Edinburgh audience Wed- 
nesday evening. Mr. Robertson and Mr. 
Kennedy have turned public opinion wholly 
their way, and Mr. Campbell will not be given 
a candid hearing even if the motley crowd 
that IS likely to assemble there for mischief or 
curiosity should not attempt to do him injury. 
The whole tone of the placards and the news- 
paper notices is that Mr. Campbell is not a fit 
man to rest in the city of Edinburgh, much 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 69 

less presume to instruct the people on religion 
in a public auditorium. These are the foun- 
dations of my fears.' 

''The Deacon remained silent for a moment 
as if in deep thought ; then rising up suddenly 
said, 'If God he for me^ loho can he against 
me. If Alexander Campbell is a man of God, 
an agent of the truth, and I have never yet 
ceased to believe that he is, I have no fears, 
and let me tell you this — you will hear some- 
thing Wednesday night the like of which you 
have never heard before. You will hear a 
man who is not to be wheedled and brow-beat- 
en by a few hot-headed alarmists, but who 
can stand before an Edinburgh audience with 
as little fear as Paul before Agrippa. You 
will not hear a silver-tongued orator, a dram- 
atic actor, sniffing and weeping to play upon 
the cords of sympathy, but a second John 
Knox of whom it may be said, while he is yet 
living he does not fear the face of man.' 
Having said this brother Morton left me. 

''Wednesday evening at seven o'clock found 
me in Waterloo Rooms. The vast auditorium 
was then filling, nearly an hour before the 
great American was to be heard. I succeeded 
in securing a good sitting for myself, in the 
right of the room, about forty feet from the 
platform. The audience now in their seats 
numbering upward of three thousand were 



70 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

quiet, little talking was done ; all eyes were 
intent upon the rostrum, though the time for 
the appearance of the speaker was over half 
an hour ahead. The crowd kept pouring in — 
the room got hot and stifling, and the only 
sound was that of waving fans. Fifteen min- 
utes more passed, and every seat in the whole 
hall was filled, but the crowd seeking entrance 
seemed increasing. All standing room was 
soon taken, and before the hour of eight ar- 
rived, every available space in the whole build- 
ing into which a human being could crowd 
himself was packed. Interest became intense 
— but hardly a word was said. The rooms 
which now held between 6,000 and 7,000 peo- 
ple grew hotter and closer. The word is giv- 
en that a woman has fainted in the rear, but 
we all hold our seats. Now some one on the 
left cries out 'Air! Let us have some ventila- 
tion.' This suggests a response from the far 
rear, where some one cries out, 'There is like- 
ly to be more ventilation than some of us care 
for before this meeting closes.' This was 
greeted by a hearty ' Hear ! Hear ! ' from all 
quarters of the audience. It sounded good. 
It looked as if this audience had some Camp- 
bell men in it who were not afraid to show 
their colors, and who were informed of the 
trickery of his enemies. I was now almost a 
Campbell man myself — the only thing I feared 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 71 

from him was his religious teaching. At this 
moment the door at the rear of the rostrum 
slightly creaks on its hinges, and all is hushed 
— every eye is strained in that direction. But 
it closes, and we are left again in suspense." 



72 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 



VI. 

It may now be interesting for us to recapi- 
tulate for a moment. Let us raise our heads, 
look about us, and see where we find ourselves. 
The Midland train had been rushing at a 
rapid rate through England, while my friend 
was rehearsing to me his interesting narrative. 
We had passed through many important 
manufacturing towns on our way. After leav- 
ing Bedford, but a few miles further on, stood 
the old hamlet of Olney some distance from 
the railroad. Here is where the poet Cowper 
lived in a family of very devout Methodists, 
and where he wrote his principal poetical 
works and religious hymns. It was here that 
he wrote ''The Task" on the suggestion of a 
lady friend, that he should compose a poem 
about the sofa on which she was sitting. 
This was ''the task" that she gave him. 
Here he also composed that popular ballad, 
"John Gilpin's Ride." But among religious 
people Cowper is known more as a psalmist. 
While yet a young man, he lost his mind, be- 
cause of the great fright with which he antic- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 73 

ipated the approach of an occasion on which 
he was to appear before court as a judicial 
reader. Upon the recovery of his reason, his 
temperament, which had before l)een skeptical 
and reckless, was changed — he was intensely 
religious, and as this was just tHe time of the 
great Methodist revival, he joined the Wes- 
leyans and became the great poet of Method- 
ism, as Milton had been of Puritanism. His 
hymns are highl}/ evangelical in spirit and 
eminently orthodox in tone, as the following 
well known verse will show : 

There is a fountain filled with blood, 

Drawn from Immanuel's veins, 
And sinners plunged beneath that flood. 

Lose all their guilty stains. 

Such a mode of expression sounds rather 
vulgar to us now; its language is grossly 
material and even coarse, but it was such lan- 
guage as this that characterized the great 
Methodist revival, and was, to a great extent, 
the source of its power with the lower classes. 

So profound had been my interest in my 
friend's narration, that in all the long distance 
from Bedford northward, I was hardly con- 
scious of what we passed. With all the beau- 
tiful and varied scenery which the route ran 
through, — the rocky, rough and hilly land 
from Leeds northward — the antique looking 
stone houses, the beautiful stone fences built 



74 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

without mortar, and winding about the hills 
and mountain sides, the green and well-kept 
hedges, which took the place of the stone 
fences from Appleby on ; with all this and 
much more, the route had not impressed me 
either one way or the other, and had not my 
return over the same road given me an oppor- 
tunity to see what I had missed, I never would 
have known what that trip contains. Such 
was the interest of the story to which I was 
listening that I had seen and not seen like the 
village girl in Enoch Arden^ ''Who sets her 
pitcher underneath the spring, hears and not 
hears and lets it overflow." . 

At the point of the narrative where the last 
paper closed, we had just left Carlisle, on the 
borders, and were rushing on toward Edin- 
burgh through the Scottish lowlands. Again 
we resume the story where we last left our 
friend : 

''The vast multitude crowded in that largest 
auditorium in Edinburo;h was orettino; restless 
and nervous — about seven thousand people, 
all drawn there by a lively interest, whether 
of curiosity or personal admiration, or desire 
for Christian enlightenment, were now await- 
ing the appearance of the famous American. 
At just 8 o'clock the door at the rear of the 
platform again opened, and Alexander Camp- 
bell, accompanied by a gentleman I did not 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 75 

know, advanced toward the audience. They 
seated themselves, and the gentleman who 
was with him, leaned over and whispered to 
Mr. Campbell. The latter, without taking 
his eyes off the audience, which he had been 
scanning with swift, flashing, eagle glances, 
nodded approval, and his companion arose and 
stood before the assembly to make the intro- 
ductory speech. What he said I can not 
remember — I doubt if any one would have 
known five minutes afterwards, for all eyes 
and minds were chained upon the illustrious 
stranger, who, with an air of perfect ease, sat 
before us with onQ arm resting on the arm of 
his chair, and the coolness of his behavior be- 
tokening his full mastery of the situation. It 
was with no sign of timorousness that he took 
in his audience. That flowing gray hair 
solicited our reverence, that dignified bearing 
commanded our respect, those keen dark eyes 
shining from under an intellectual forehead 
and heavy eyebrows, filled us with a certain 
admiration and awe. This man would be no 
humble petitioner for our grace — he would 
not play upon our passions, nor stoop to the 
exercise of the orator's trick to gain our favor 
and sympathy. From the moment I set my 
eyes upon him, my previous impressions van- 
ished — this was not the Alexander Campbell 
whom I had seen in fancy. A like change 



76 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

came over the minds of the audience. A mur- 
mur of surprise and admiration went through 
the whole house, when he sat down. 

" A whisper behind me, which I overheard, 
will represent the first impression with which 
Alexander Campbell inspired that assembly. 
' He is the Saul of this company,' spoke a 
voice just behind me as Mr. Campbell sat 
down and looked over the mass of human- 
ity which lay before him. And this was the 
feeling of that night — here was a man who 
stood head and shoulders above all that were 
in the house. 

''When the brief remarks of introduction 
were finished he arose and advanced to the 
front of the platform. He was rather tall, 
but firmly built. His complexion was ruddy 
and even youthful ; but his hair was nearly 
white. His carriage was erect and imposing, 
but his pose was not that of an orator who has 
carefully studied pantomime and stands for 
effect. He seemed oblivious of his attitude ; 
he had something to say, but no piece to act. 
My memory of his opening words is quite dis- 
tinct. 

' ' ' My Friends and Citizens of Edinburgh : 
It is with gratitude that I see so vast an audi- 
ence in this room, and we shall hope, and 
surely our hopes will be fulfilled, that the mo- 
tive which has brought you here is your desire 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 77 

to know the truth in whatever directions of it 
we may choose to follow.' 

''These words were given in a full and 
rounded voice, and with a confidence and force 
which was calculated to quiet all opposition 
and question. Nevertheless, a great distur- 
bance arose in the rear which had been previ- 
ously arranged for by Campbeirs enemies. 
It began with a simultaneous coughing and 
scraping of feet. The speaker's method of 
procedure during this annoyance was the best 
I have ever seen. He knew that the great 
majority of his auditors were curious to hear 
what he was going to say, and were anxious 
to catch every word. Instead then of stop- 
ping for the noise to subside, in which case a 
general hubbub would have been brought on, 
he continued in his cool, easy and interesting 
way of speaking, without raising his voice, or 
taking the least notice of the disturbance. 
In a few moments so annoyed were the re- 
mainder of the audience, who were hardly 
able to follow the speaker's thoughts in all 
the noise, that they soon hissed the roisterers 
into shame and silence. This was the great 
man's first victory — ^we were all now getting 
into sympathy with him. In the general quiet 
that followed the hissing, he caught his first 
chain of union that helped to bind him more 
to his audience ; his face lit up with a renewed 



78 



ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 



iirft, and his expression took on a fuller vigor ; 
be had been from the beginning master of 
the situation ; he was now lord of all he sur- 
veyed. A gradually swelling volume of voice 
and thought began from this point. His well- 
rounded and finished periods rolled one upon 
another laden with thought, compact but clear, 
and logic, close and rigid. Not a sentence 
but the freshness of the thought, the force 
and aptness of the expression, the convincing 
logic that held it, surprised us. I have not a 
distinct recollection of what he said; not 
even of the line of argument which he pursued, 
but I see his form before me after the flight 
of nearly half a century as I saw it then, 
strong and commanding, quiet yet animated. 
I can hear again, as the rush of distant but 
mighty waters, the volume of that voice, 
bearing on its tide facts and arguments that 
seemed to place all things on which he touch- 
ed beyond all peradventure. I can see once 
more that spell-bound multitude that sat for 
three hours under the matchless torrent of el- 
oquence of the highest kind, inspired, as it 
was, by the occasion, the vast audience and 
the causes which had brought them there. 
One more attempt at a disturbance had been 
made early in the evening when Mr. Camp- 
bell was reading the letter he had written to 
the Journal, offering to debate with any man 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 79 

whom the Anti-Slavery Society might choose, 
on the subject of American slavery, even with 
the Eev. James Eobertson himself, provided 
he was not the James Eobertson who had been 
expelled from his church for violating the fifth 
commandment. At this point the cry of 
'Libel!' was raised by some friends of Eob- 
ertson, which suggested to him, no doubt, his 
subsequent course of action. But this cry 
Mr. Campbell treated in the same method he 
had used with the first disturbance, and it was 
soon quieted." 



80 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 



VII. 

The address of Alexander Campbell before 
an audience prejudiced greatly against him at 
the start, and composed of a people peculiarly 
difficult to work upon, was a feat of oratory such 
as has but one comparison in this century 
— that of Henry Ward Beecher in Liverpool. 
But there are points of difference between 
these two very similar facts in the history of 
oratory. Beecher' s audience, in the first 
place, not so large, was not prejudiced against 
him, but his cause — of him as a man they 
knew little. The audience that met him was 
louder and more boisterous in its interruptions 
— it was of a coarser and more illiterate class 
of people, not so serious in its prejudices, nor 
so embarrassiug in its opposition. There were 
many Americans who were with Beecher, and 
a large percentage of the assemby was m sym- 
pathy with him, and exerted its influence to 
quiet disorder, and render him encouraging 
applause. But none of these things were 
points in Campbell's favor. He had to face 
an enormous assemblage of intelligent people, 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 81 

wrought up to a high degree of righteous in- 
dignation and intense prejudice against him 
personally , they met him not with the tumult 
and uproar that confronted Beecher, but with 
that repellant expression of distrust and sus- 
picion which is often more embarrassing and 
unnerving to a speaker than a riotous and 
noisy opposition. 

But the calm dignity and repose with which 
he appeared before his audience, and the easy 
but respectful confidence which he manifested 
in himself, the supreme contempt with which 
he treated the interruptions that began with 
the opening of his speech, the entrancing 
power of his language, and the fascination 
and force of his delivery, made him master of 
his audience — they seemed to forget them- 
selves and sat at his feet as learners. 

Beecher is more human than Campbell — he 
was troubled by the hissing and mimicking 
that he received and sometimes even lost his 
temper, as where he said after a very exas- 
perating season of hissing and uproar, ^'I 
think the bark of those men is worse than their 
bite. They don't mean any harm — they don't 
know any better." This was in harmony with 
Beecher' s temperament, though not quite rep- 
resentative of his usual presence of mind, but 
nothing could have been less consonant with 
the tone and spirit of Campbell than to have 



82 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

shown such irritation. The Liverpool rabble 
received patronage for their coarse jests and 
sarcastic ridicule in the attention which the 
speaker paid to them, but there was no satis- 
faction to the interrupter of the Edinburgh 
orator; his carriage and demeanor, as well as 
the momentum of his thought and speech, 
and the positiveness of his personality made 
such frivolity and play very much out of tone. 
Beech er's speech, with all its interruptions, 
was an hour and a half long. Campbell spoke 
continuously for nearly three hours, and dur- 
ing that three hours a gradual but very com- 
plete change was produced in his listeners. 
They were not Goldsmith's ''fools who came 
to scoff" and ''remained to pray," but they 
were intelligent people who came as censors to 
listen to a criminal's attempt at self-justifica- 
tion, and then condemn him, but they re- 
mained as humble disciples, hanging upon the 
lips of one who had been to them the type of 
all that was unworthy. I refer to the great 
bulk of the audience, and neither to the 
friends, nor irreconcilable enemies of Camp- 
bell, who were there m large numbers, but 
composed only a small proportion of the 
whole assembly. Campbell was not greeted 
with applause once — it was a quiet affair. I 
resume my friend's narrative again as he de- 
scribes the closing of the great meeting: 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 83 

''At the close of the address, they seemed 
to remain for a moment in their seats, and 
turned with a sort of confused expression of 
surprise as they looked now for the first time 
in three hours into each other's faces — there 
had been a revulsion of feeling, and they 
seemed as if ashamed to talk with one another. 
Slowly and quietly they passed out. I looked 
over the mass of moving people, and there I 
saw my friend Robertson. He had received 
some very dispassionate, but rough handling 
by the speaker of the evening, whose power 
of administrating a dignified but smarting cas- 
tigation I have seldom if ever seen equalled. 
There was a cloudy expression of evil in Rob- 
ertson's countenance, mingled with the shrink- 
ing signs of humiliation and disappointment. 
He had been baffled. Alexander Campbell 
was now a hero, and he himself a villain m 
proportion. I could read his feelings well 
enough, and told Deacon Morton whom I saw 
smiling and exultant, as we were passing out 
of the door that the thing was not ended yet, 
if I rightly interpreted the handwriting on the 
wall, for Robertson's face did resemble a stone 
wall in its blank, cold determination. But we 
had no time nor opportunity for a conversa- 
sion, for soon we were separated again by the 
jam. I went immediately to my lodgings in 
the city and retired." 



84 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

Now while our friend Laird is enjoying his 
refreshing slumber after the great address 
which he has described, let us take a view of 
the religious situation in Scotland. Four 
years before this time the disruption of the 
National Kirk had taken place, and Thomas 
Chalmers, with 400 of the most pious and 
learned men of the old Kirk, went off and 
formed a communion of their own, since 
known as the Free Church of Scotland. This 
became at once a very powerful body, and has, 
since that day, contributed to Scotland a large 
part of the brains that gives her such a high 
status in the world of intellect. A wave of 
religious excitement had from 1840 and ear- 
lier passed over Scotland which did not spend 
its forces for several years. It affected all 
denominations. The following clipping from 
the Glasgow Chronicle^ in 1839, gives us a 
representative picture of the revival mania in 
Scotland : 

" It appears to have been understood among 
the revivalists that there was to be on Sunday, 
' a great manifestation of the power of God,' 
at Kilsyth ; and in consequence there were as- 
sembled in the village that day people from 
the farthest north to the English borders. 
Beds had been bespoken for weeks previous ; 
but the accommodation was quite inadequate 
for the multitudes that poured in, and hun- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 85 

dreds had to bivouac in the open air. Every 
kind of conveyance from Glasgow was taken 
up, and fares were inordinately raised. The 
greater number of clergymen present belonged 
to the Established church, but there were also 
Dissenters of different denominations — Bap- 
tists, Methodists, etc. The services began in 
the parish church at 10 o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and in an open field soon after, where 
they were persevered in until 6 o'clock on 
Monday morning. They were resumed Mon- 
day at 10, and were continued through 
the whole day and ensuing night. A third 
time the vast congregation assembled yester- 
day afternoon, and we understand the pro- 
ceedings were not yet at a close, and scenes of 
a most deplorable nature were exhibited. Nor 
was the language of the preachers calculated 
to calm the storm. One reverend gentleman 
told a portion of his audience that he ' saw the 
devil looking out of their eyes ; ' on which sev- 
eral women fell down insensible. On this, as 
on previous occasions, the chief actors in the 
scene were the clergy and the women. This 
revival mania (says a correspondent), has 
boarded our canal boats, and where formerly 
a blind old man might be found drawing a few 
pence from the compassion of the passengers, 
through the strains of his fiddle, we have now 
regular conventicles. Yesterday evening I 



86 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

came into Glasgow from Kirkintillock, in one 
of the canal boats, and was astonished to find 
a company of people engaged in religious ex- 
ercises, with all the fervor peculiar to them. 
The service was led by a clergyman who gave 
out a Psalm which was sung by the followers 
(mostly women) ; he then prayed and preached 
in the revival strain. A number of the other 
passengers, conceiving that this mode of act- 
ing was quite improper in a promiscuous com- 
pany confined together on board a small boat, 
exhibited symptoms of impatience, on which 
they were denounced as children of the devil 
and heirs of hell." 

The religious fanaticism was a sort of epi- 
demic that spread over the whole of the is- 
land. It was about this time — a few years 
later — that the outbreak of the " Canterbury 
Fanatics" took place. About the begmning 
of the year 1842, a stranger made his appear- 
ance at Canterbury, who attracted consider- 
able notice by his handsome and commanding 
figure. He put forth pretensions to superior 
sanctity, and mysteriously intimated that he 
had a great work to do. The state of the 
public mind was such that devotees soon sur- 
rounded him, largely of the low and ignorant 
class, but also a few of wealth and respect- 
able station. He passed himself off as Sir 
William Courtney, but his real name was John 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 87 

Thorn. This man, thouo-h half crazy him- 
self, and a most transparent religious fraud, 
was able to put himself at the head of a mul- 
titude of followers, for he had pursuaded 
them that he was the Messiah, and marching 
through the country m their lawless frenzy, 
they were repulsed only after much blood- 
shed and the death of the impostor himself. 
Nearly all human movements, though they be 
good on the whole, are likely to bear some of 
the evil fruits. These are some of the evil 
fruits of the great evangelical revival of the 
eighteenth century. 

This general religious fanaticism gradually 
cooled down and was superseded by a deep 
and intelligent interest in religious matters 
such as was at the basis of the " Disruption " 
of 1843, and as gave a profound interest in 
the restoration of apostolic Christianity. In- 
dividuals here and there were breaking away 
from sectarian Christianity and seeking to re- 
alize the primitive model as developed in the 
New Testament ; churches were heard from in 
different parts of the kingdom, which were 
already walking wholly in the light of the New 
Testament. Timothy Coop had trod the path 
of the Restoration alone, and had founded a 
congregation after the apostolic example be- 
fore he had even heard of the Current Refor- 
mation. The movement of the Plymouth 



88 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

Brethren was a systematic attempt along the 
same line. 

The picture of religious Britain for the 
closing decade of the first half of this century 
is one of exceeding interest for all these 
reasons. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 89 



VIII. 

We have dwelt sufficiently upon the Edin- 
burgh sensation of Alexander Campbell's 
Scottish tour — an incident of no little fame 
both here and in Scotland, even to this day. 
The religious principles of which he was the 
great exponent, and for the dissemination of 
which his British trip had been largely 
planned, had suffered greatly in the noise and 
excitement of this sensation — the public mind 
was too much engrossed by the personal 
troubles in which he was entrapped, for such 
a cool and deliberate consideration of his views 
as was calculated to make adherents to the 
system of truth which he advocated. The 
plans of his enemies had in a certain degree 
been successful. They had detracted popular 
attention from the principles to the man, from 
the work to the instrument of it, from the 
fountain to the channel, from the truth to the 
medium ; and although Campbell was more 
than justified in the eyes of Scotland, so 
that even his enemies became his friends, the 
course which led to his arrest and from thence 



1 



90 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

to his justification, though a course for which 
he was not in himself in the least at fault, 
was not propitious for the growth of his sys- 
tem of religious faith. Seasons of great per- 
sonal, social and political agitation are most 
unfavorable to religious interest and activity. 
These personal troubles of Campbell were the 
principal cause of his failure to enlist the at- 
tention of the people to his Christian doc- 
trines. But great social embarrassments and 
afflictions also unfitted the people of Britain 
for the hearing of religious truth in polemical 
discussions at this time. The Irish Famine 
was at its starving period. This great event 
held for the moment the profound attention 
of both islands. It was the theme of orators 
in the pulpit and on the platform, the subject 
of the press, and the great question of Parlia- 
ment. Sir Charles Trevelyan in 1848 said in 
the Edinburgh Review: " The time has not 
yet arrived at which any man can with confi- 
dence say that he fully appreciates the nature 
and the bearings of that great event which 
will long be inseparably associated with the 
year just departed." ''Ireland is in your 
hands," cried Daniel O'Connel, in February, 
1847, the last time his voice was ever heard in 
Parliament, '* if you do not save her, she must 
die." The queen in her message proroguing 
Parliament, in the summer of '47, said: " I 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 91 

join [with my people] in supplications to Al- 
mighty God that the dearth by which we have 
been afflicted, may by the divine blessing be 
converted into cheapness and plenty," At 
this time also Great Britain found herself in 
widespread financial distress. So complicated 
were her commercial relations that the abun- 
dant harvest which came in the autumn of '47 
did not end her troubles. Chas. Knight in his 
history of England says that ''in September and 
October there had been such a pressure upon the 
merchants and traders as had not been exper- 
ienced since the great panic of 1825. Mer- 
cantile houses in London of the highest emi- 
nence suspended their payments. Correspond- 
ing disasters occurred at Manchester, Liver- 
pool and Glasgow. ... In October the 
alarm swelled into a general panic; the crash 
of eminent houses went on in London ; in the 
country not only mercantile firms but banks 
were failing; the funds fell rapidly; exche- 
quer bills were at a high rate of discount." 
As a result of these social and financial trou- 
bles, the political life of Great Britain ran 
high. The navigation laws were suspended in 
the spring of '47, the corn laws were repealed, 
and the protective duties abolished or reduced. 
Such was the social, commercial and politi- 
cal state of Great Britain in the summer of ' 47 . 
It was therefore an unfavorable season for 



92 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 



religious reform. Yet, notwithstanding all 
this, very unusual and quite immediate fruits 
followed Campbell's preaching in Scotland. 
In this specific work, even cold and conserva- 
tive Edinburgh was not behind the rest of 
Scotland. George Gilfillan in his Scottish 
Covenant^ says that ''Edinburgh, with all its 
intelligence is a cold, skeptical and heartless 
city. From the influence of Hume's atheism 
it has passed into the shadow of the modified 
materialism of Combe. Eeligion is indeed 
able to maintain its ground, but little more, 
and dwells too evidently in an enemy's coun- 
try, sneered at by one species of philosophers 
and ostentatiously patronized by another, find- 
ing many partisans in all parts of the city, 
but not pervading it all like a transforming 
leaven." But in the face of all the obstacles 
that stood in the way, Alexander Campbell 
made a deep and lasting impression on the 
religious life of Edinburgh. There is there 
to this day a strong, influential, and intelli- 
gent body of Disciples, which we visited last 
summer, but which, if it had been of any other 
shade of faith, would, by all that has worked 
against it, have been long since in its grave. 
Campbell, with all the detractions and diffi- 
culties which he met in that city, left his fol- 
lowers (if we may so speak of them) greatly 
strengthened in intellectual and social influ- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 93 

ence, and stronger, I believe, than they are 
comparatively to-day. From Edinburgh he 
visited the other important cities in Scotland, 
filling his previously made appointments and 
complying with as many of the numerous calls 
which came to him, as his appointed time would 
permit. But in this we shall not follow him, 
as nothing eventful marked his journey till 
we find him in Glasgow, where the great mis- 
fortune of his tour, and, as we might say, of 
his life, befell him. 

Apropos to the remarks I have made upon 
the religious condition of Britain in the last 
decade of the first half of the present centu- 
ry, I wish to quote from Dr. Eobert Baird's 
Religion in America^ a work of eight books, 
first published in Edinburgh in 1843, four 
years before Campbell visited that land. This 
work was immediately translated into French, 
German, Swedish and Dutch ''and obtained 
a wide circulation on the continent as well as 
in the British Isles." Dr. Baird was an Amer- 
ican writing for Europeans. The work was 
revised in 1855, and his statistics were brought 
up to that time. He ranks the " Disciples of 
Christ, or Reformers, as they call themselves, 
or Campbellites, as they are most commonly 
called by others," as one of the smallest Bap- 
list denominations. ''It is," says he, "with 
some hesitation that, by placing these in this 



94 ALEXANDER CAMPBELUS 

connection, I rank them among the evangeli- 
cal Christians. I do so because their creed, 
taken as it stands in written terms, is not hetero- 
dox. Not only do they not deny, but in words 
their creed aiErms the doctrine of the Trinity, 
of salvation by the merits of Christ, and the ne- 
cessity of the regenerating or sanctifying in- 
fluences of the Holy Spirit. Yet, I under- 
stand that there is much about their preaching 
that seems to indicate that all that they consid- 
er necessary to salvation is little if anything 
more than a speculative, philosophical faith 
in connection with immersion as the only 
proper mode of baptism ; so that there is 
little after all of that 'repentance toward 
God' and 'faith toward our Lord Jesus 
Christ,' which are the indispensable terms of 
the Gospel." 

''And what does Dr. Campbell propose to 
do?" our author further enquires. He then 
answers his own query in the following quota- 
tion from Campbell himself. " Simply ' to 
ascertain from the Holy Scriptures, according 
to commonly- received and well-established 
rules of interpretation, the ideas attached to 
the leading terms and sentences found in the 
Holy Scriptures, and then use the words of 
the Holy Spirit in the apostolic acceptation of 
them I ' But let us hear him further : ' By 
thus expressing the ideas communicated by 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 95 

the Hoh^ Spirit in the terms and phrases 
learned by the Apostles, and by avoiding the 
artificial and technical language of scholastic 
theology, they propose to restore a pure 
speech to the household of faith.' And in 
this way they expect to put an end to all 
divisions and disputes and promote the sancti- 
fication of the faithful. And all this is pro- 
posed by those who reject all creeds for 
churches; excepting, indeed, that which con- 
sists in making the Bible speak theirs ! How- 
ever plausible it may be to talk in this way all 
church history has shown that there is no 
more certain way of introducing all manner of 
heresy than by dispensing with all written 
creeds and formularies of doctrine, and allow- 
ing all who profess to believe in the Bible, 
though attaching any meaning to it they 
please, to become members of the church. 
[Now here comes a prophecy]. For awhile, 
possibly this scheme may seem to work well, 
but before half a century has passed, all man- 
ner of error will be found to have entered and 
nestled in the House of God." How well 
this prophecy has been verified those who 
have been eye-witnesses of the growth in faith 
and works of this religious community for the 
last half century (for it has been nearly a half 
century since these words were written) can 
testify. There is not to-day a more intelli- 



96 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

gently and rationally orthodox people in this 
country than the Disciples of Christ. The 
philosophy of Dr. Baird and that of Alexan- 
der Campbell have been weighed in the 
balance that Dr. Baird selected — a half cen- 
tury's experience — and the former has been 
found wanting. The principles of the great 
reformer have stood the test. If our fathers 
fifty years ago could have foreseen this, many 
thousands more would to-day have been walk- 
ing with us. Then after speaking briefly 
upon the character of the faith '' itis not dif- 
ficult to see that churches may soon be 
gathered, in which there will be but little true 
religion." 

''It is on this account," he continues, 
''that evangelical Christians in America, 
Baptists as well as Peedobaptists, have many 
fears about Dr. Campbell and his followers. 
It is believed, however, that as yet there are 
not a few sincerely pious people among his 
congregations, who have been led away by his 
plausible representations respecting the evil of 
creeds. Time can only show the issue." 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 97 



IX. 

Having spoken thus at length on the rehg- 
ious spirit that prevailed at the time of Camp- 
bell's visit to Scotland, and the ideas concern- 
ing him and his work that had been previous- 
ly published abroad, we shall resume the 
thread of our friend's narrative. 

''After the Edinburgh meeting I was par- 
ticularly interested in Mr. Campbell's move- 
ments. His victory over the Edmburgh audi- 
ence was local, not general. It served rather 
to unite his enemies and intensify their bitter- 
ness for him. ' Campbellism,' which had be- 
fore been but a harmless delusion became in 
the danger that now threatened Scotland's re- 
ligious peace, a ' damnable heresy.' No man 
now defended Alexander Campbell, the arch- 
heretic from this on, with impunity. In my 
own congregation there had been many who 
held views similar to those preached by Camp- 
bell and who had even advocated them before 
his coming, but they were quiet now unless 
they dared to face the music. Among 
these daring ones was Solomon Morton. Her- 



98 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

esy had been whispered against him before — 
now it was loud, since he was fearless in his 
defense of Campbell and his views. I tried 
as much as I thought prudent to shield my 
friend, but he had become so fully converted 
to the new ideas (or the old ones as he used 
to call them) that he could not refrain from 
openly expressing his confidence in them. 
This was going a little too far, and against 
my earnest action, he was brought to trial, 
charged with ' holding doctrines contrary to 
the teachmgs of the Holy Spirit and perilous 
to be held both for the soul's salvation and 
the safety of God's church.' I tried very 
hard to prevail upon Morton to retract, but 
he firmly held his ground. The day for trial 
came — it was held in the vestry of the church 
and many ecclesiastical dignitaries from 
abroad were there to witness the first trial for 
the Campbellistic heresy. It began at ten 
o'clock. After a prayer by a visiting preach- 
er the proceedings of the day began. The 
presiding presbyter stated the purpose of the 
meeting, and the general charge, which we 
have mentioned, was read, and followed by a 
warm discussion on the part of his prosecutors. 
He was accused of sympathizing with slavery 
and man-stealing, of holding doctrines not in 
consonance with the Westminister Confession, 
of having discarded the Presbyterian name, 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 99 

and of many other things which made him 
unworthy of further Christian communion. 
Morton was then called out to answer these 
charges. He came forward, took out his 
Bible and opened it. Just then one of the 
prosecutors arose and reminded the chairman 
that a categorical answer should be required 
of the heretic on trial, he should respond 
*yes' or 'no' to every separate accusation. 
The injustice of such a requirement was obvi- 
ous, and, besides, it was contrary to the cus- 
tom the Scottish Church had always ob- 
served. I immediately arose and objected to 
such a course of action as unworthy of the 
church and as likely to do us more harm in the 
eyes of our people than all the protection it 
could be in this case. I trusted wo were not 
so fearful of Morton in his use of Scripture 
that we could not accord him such a hearing 
as heretics had always been afforded. At this, 
one of the prosecutors responded that permis- 
sion should not be given anyone to desecrate 
the Word of God by using it in support of 
heretical notions. 'We are all convinced,' 
said he, 'of his heresy. I move that we pro- 
ceed at once to a vote.' Deacon Morton then 
spoke: 'Brethren,' said he, 'is this a mat- 
ter in which I am to have nothing to say? Am 
I to be condemned upon the testimony of 
others, who can not, by the nature of things, 



100 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

possess quite as accurate knowledge of the 
state of my heart and mind as I possess my- 
self ? I have been charged with sympathizing 
with and believing in certain things. Full 
and unhindered testimony has been rendered 
in this matter by others. Is not my testi- 
mony on a subject concerning which I claim 
to be as well informed as they, worth some- 
thing, and can they not accord me as much 
patience, while I clef end myself slb I have giv- 
en them while they were accusing me? I ask, 
will you hear my testimony on this subject? ' 
After some discussion, Morton was voted ten 
minutes in which to make his reply. ' The 
specific, written charge against me,' said he, 
' is that I hold doctrines contrary to the teach- 
ing of the Holy Spirit. To this much I can 
give a categorical answer. I hold the words 
of the Holy Spirit in my hand. I deny that I 
cherish one doctrine contrary to the teaching 
of this book. Let my accusers specify one 
and I shall humbly retract it in your presence 
to-day. This answer covers the whole of the 
written charge, for if my doctrines are not 
contrary to the teachings of the Holy Spirit, 
they can not be ' perilous to the soul's salva- 
tion ' nor to the safety of God's church. I 
deny the charge until more definite accusa- 
tions are made. Wherein do I offend the 
Holy Spirit? It has been said to-day that I 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 101 

sympathize with slavery. For this charge 
there is no foundation, and I hardly need take 
the trouble to deny it. It has been also said 
that I do not respect the Westminister con- 
fession. I frankly own that it exercises no 
power over my convictions. If it is the voice of 
the Holy Spirit, then have I offended against 
God, but if it is not the voice of Holy Spirit, 
why should you or I respect its spiritual do- 
minion over us? I ask you, is it the voice of 
the Holy Spirit? If so, then, it have I of- 
fended. If not, then surely I have avoided 
that same offence in refusing to place it in the 
throne of the Holy Spirit, an offence which 
you commit, and not I. The only question, 
therefore, which determines whether heresy 
lies on your side or on mine, is whether the 
Westminster creed is the voice of the Holy 
Spirit. 

'' ^ I have also been charged with rejecting 
the Presbyterian name. Show me where such 
a rejection is contrary to the teachings of the 
Holy Spirit, and again I shall own my fault 
and abjure my heresy. Again the point upon 
which our respective orthodoxy is to be hung 
is whether the Presbyterian name has been 
applied to us by the Holy Spirit. If it has, 
then am I a heretic for rejecting it; if not, 
then you are the heretics for assuming it.' 

There was no response to anything that 



102 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

Morton had said. He was called down by the 
chairman on the second, but his ten minutes 
had been sufficient. His prosecutors became 
more rabid in their remarks, but the more 
reasonable portion of the session considered 
him with some favor. The vote was taken 
and by a plurality of two votes against him he 
was pronounced a heretic. This trial did us 
more harm than anything else that had hap- 
pened to us. It was universally condemned 
as an outrage and such a reaction followed 
that several of our best members went with 
Morton and joined the Disciples in Edinburgh. 
It was the first and last trial for heresy of 
Campbellism that was ever precipitated upon 
a Scottish Kirk- session to my knowledge." 

Just as my friend Laird was concluding his 
account of the heresy trial of Solomon Mor- 
ton, the Midland train which we had taken 
that morning from London, went thundering 
into the Edinburgh depot. He was met at 
the train by his family, and after introducing 
me to them, he urged me very earnestly to go 
with him to his home and accept his hospital- 
ity while in Edinburgh, hoping, as he said, 
that we might have an opportunity of further 
conversing on this theme, which was so inter- 
esting to him. But as my traveling plan did 
not favor my accepting his invitation, I begged 
to decline, and, hastily bidding each other 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 103 

good-bye, we were soon lost in the jam that 
gathered upon the platform. I watched him 
with a feelino: of strano-e loneliness as his tall 
form and flowing hair vanished from my sight 
in the evening twilight. I had learned much 
from him; he hadfgiven my young hero-wor- 
shiping enthusiasm a wider field of action; he 
had given me a straightforward record, honest 
and simple, of some sad experiences in a great 
man's life; a kind old man he was and now I 
should see him no more. The narrative of 
John Laird is ended, but the saddest trial of 
our Eeformer^is yet to be told. 



104 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 



X. 

It has been said by a certain writer that 
Campbell's ''journey through Scotland was 
more like a triumphal march of a conquering 
hero than that of a preacher of the gospel." 
In this statement there is much truth ; Aber- 
deen, Dundee, Montrose, Glasgow and all the 
great cities of Scotland which he visited, paid him 
such distinction as had been seldom showed to 
any American. But through his whole jour- 
ney there was much unpleasantness ; at every 
point he stopped, he found that the great red 
placards to which we have referred, had pre- 
ceded him, forwarded from Edinburgh by 
Eobertson and his colleagues. 

After leaving John Laird at Edinburgh, my 
journey was chiefly among the Highlands, and 
I had little chance of seeing any one who 
might draw out to its end the broken thread 
of his narrative. But in my diary I find the 
following memorandum : 

''July 24. — Came from Oban last night on 
steamer 'Clansman,' had another interesting 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 105 

talk with a man about Campbell, landed at 
Greenock, proceeded to Glasgow." 

July 23, we had left in the morning for a 
sail along the Eoss of Mull to the ancient is- 
land of lona or Icolmkill, and the not less in- 
teresting island of Staff a, returning to Oban 
in the evening. In this trip was a Glasgow 
shoe merchant, who was spending his summer 
in this popular resort. He was an old man of 
fine presence ; he had the stature and manner 
of a Highlander. I enjoyed his intelligent 
conversation. On the following morning, 
when I boarded the •'Clansman" for Green- 
ock, this gentleman was on board. We im- 
mediately recognized each other and gradually 
fell into conversation. Our discourse turned 
on America and Americans, then upon religion 
in Scotland and America. I freely expressed 
my views as to the most feasible solution of 
denominational difficulties, and to my surprise 
he echoed my sentiments. Here is a man, 
thought I, who, like many others that are not 
informed of the movement toward Christian 
union, now in progress along this line, sees 
the ideal beauty of the scheme, and seizes the 
conception with enthusiasm. I thought it 
would be interesting to him to know that a 
definite movement had taken up this thought, 
and was bringing it out of the regions of ab- 
stract theory into the clear light of life and 



106 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

practice. I told him of the Disciples in 
America, and referred him to the work of 
Alexander Campbell, of whom, as I said, he 
might have heard. He heard me patiently 
through, and then with a smile, asked me if I 
had ever seen and known the great man whose 
name I had mentioned. My reply, that 
Campbell had died before my birth sufficiently 
answered his question. 

^'Then, possibly," said he, ^'I can tell you 
something about him. I have known and 
heard Alexander Campbell." 

Once more I was a learner, and, begging 
him to relate his reminiscences of the great 
Reformer, which he began with interesting 
earnestness, I listened. 

''The summer of 1847," he began, ''is one I 
shall not soon forget. I had been a member 
of the Free church in Paisley — a young man 
just starting in business for myself. I was 
not particularly religious in nature. In fact, 
I was considerable of a skeptic. I was 
twenty-two years old that summer, and engaged 
to be married to a young lady of fine family, 
intelligence and beauty. Her name was 
Jeanette Craig. She was a member of the 
Congregational church, which was then one 
of the largest in the city. My skepticism, 
which I had not had the consideration to con- 
ceal from her, was, I knew, a cause of sorrow 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 107 

to her. Although she said little about it, she 
often handed me books and pamphlets to read, 
in the hope of staying the landslide of my faith. 
But none of these things had effect upon me. 
I was a great admirer of Robert Owen and his 
socialistic views as well as his infidelity, and 
one after another every dogma and article of 
faith as expressed in our standards vanished 
from my mind. I saw them go with sorrow 
and regret, but I could not help it ; they were 
gone. 

* 'Nothing had stood between Jeanette and 
me until the laxity of my religious views 
began to be whispered about, and Mr. Craig 
became alarmed at our intimacy, and, as I 
afterwards learned, told her she could never 
marrv an infidel. For several months she had 
concealed the family opposition to my suit, all 
the time exerting her utmost endeavor to re- 
move the cause of her parents' complaint. 
All her efforts in my behalf had failed. My 
love for her could not chanae mv faith ; her 
tears could not make real a truth which I be- 
lieved did not exist, and I would not profess a 
faith to her which I did not possess, and I 
resolved to set myself about my own conver- 
sion, using every means in my power to hon- 
estly remove this ugly barrier. 

*'One morning," continued my informant, 
''as I was sitting behind the accountant's desk 



108 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

in the store, meditating thoughtfully upon the 
great problem of life, and the personal prob- 
lem which was just then resting as a burden so 
heavily upon me, I received a package by ex- 
press — it was a book. Business was dull, it 
being in the heat of the summer season, and I 
hailed with delight anything that seemed fitted 
to break the monotony of the dreary hours. 
I opened the package, and found the enclosed 
book to be the record of a debate between 
Eobert Owen, my great hero, and a certain 
Alexander Campbell, of America. The book had 
been somewhat worn. Within the cover was 
a slip of paper, upon which were written these 
words, 'with a prayer for your conversion.' 
It was Jeanette's handwriting. I was sincere 
in desiring my own conversion, but I feared 
the issue of reading such a book. In Robert 
Ovven I had the greatest confidence. Of 
Alexander Campbell I had never heard, with 
any certain knowlege. But I determined to 
give it a fair trial, though I had no hope of 
any change in my faith. Instead, I feared 
that this would complete its downfall. Jean- 
ette had meant well by sending me this book, 
and for her sake I would do it justice. I 
commenced at the beginning ; I read the whole 
account of the preparation for the debate. I 
read every word of Owen's introductory ad- 
dress. I liked it; I found myself back again. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 109 

skeptic — in sympathy with infidelity, and al- 
most anxious for the downfall of the great 
Christian superstition. But before I read 
through Mr. Campbell's masterly reply, ray 
position was doubtful ; I was not so sure that 
Owen could sustain his 'proposition.' The 
second address of Owen's was a slight disap- 
pointment ; he had not been successful in an- 
swering his opponent's reasoning, and had for 
the most part avoided it. I became absorbed ; 
the concision and force of the American's ar- 
gument, the majestic flow of his incomparable 
style charmed me. His manliness and courage 
in attacking his opponent's reasoning, and his 
integrity in holding closely to the points in 
question as long as there seemed to be any 
hope in holding Owen to the same close work, 
called out my young admiration. The power 
of his logic was convincing. If I was any 
longer an infidel, it was not because I had not 
suflScient foundation upon which to build my 
faith. As for Eobert Owen, he was a failure ; 
his propositions proved nothing; he was not 
equal to the grounds he took ; he stood as a 
dwarf in the palm of a giant's hand. Through 
chapter after chapter I read; the hour for 
luncheon came, but I read on; dinner hour 
came, and I was yet reading. I closed the 
book where Campbell, after having tried to 
maintain a close debate and hold Owen to the 



110 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

points in question, gives it up as a thing im- 
possible, and lays out in an elaborate course 
of reasoning, the evidences of Christian fact — 
the basis for Christian faith. 

This day marked a cross in the history of 
my life. If I remained longer an unbeliever, 
I had nothing but myself to blame ; I now had 
less as a skeptic to stand upon than as a 
Christian. I was happy; I felt like shouting 
for joy ; the whole world looked bright ; the 
gloomy clouds of unbelief had rolled away, 
and I saw clearly the full orb of the sun of 
righteousness. How reasonable Christianity 
was to me now ! I did not need to read more. 
No barrier would now stand between Jeanette 
and myself ; I could hardly wait. That same 
evening I went to see her and told her I was a 
Christian with faith as firm as her own — that 
she had wrought my conversion. The scene 
that followed I shall not need to describe. 
She called her parents, and before I left that 
night, the day was set. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. Ill 



XI. 

"Imagine, if you please, my surprise when 
a few days after this I read a long account in 
the paper, of Alexander Campbell's visit to 
Scotland, and that he was on his way to Glas- 
gow, and would, on the following Sunday, 
preach in the Baptist church in Paisley. I 
was elated beyond measure, and began at 
once to notify my friends, and tell them who 
Alexander Campbell was, but to my further 
surprise, I found that every one knew all 
about it, and very few informed people were 
not familiar with the great man's name. My 
experience over forty years ago was what 
your own has been to-day. 

''Every day's papers from this on con- 
tained accounts of Campbell — some favorable, 
some unfavorable, and some indifferent. 
Much of the week he lectured in Glasgow, and 
I went one night to hear him, but, getting there 
rather late, was not able to obtain entrance. 
Before Sunday came the people of Paisley 
were worked up to some degree of excitement 
concerning him, and his doctrines, his life 



112 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

and his Edinburgh troubles, but I remained 
his staunch companion through it all. Satur- 
day night rolled around; crowds upon the 
streets were talking about the man who was 
to preach in the Baptist church on the fol- 
lowing day. Some one stated that he was 
a slaveholder, but this was successfully con- 
tradicted. Another old Presbyterian deacon 
said that Campbell did not believe in the 
divinity of Christ and, he feared, would un- 
settle the faith of young people. Now was 
the time for me to speak and I spoke. One 
week ago I was skeptic ; I was now a full be- 
liever; Alexander Campbell had done it!" 
The next day was the Sunday toward which 
I had so hopefully looked. A bright and 
beautiful summer day it was — the air was 
cool and balmy. A half hour before the regular 
church service hour, Jeanette and I were on our 
way to the Baptist church. The vast house — 
for it was one of the largest church edifices 
in the place — was, even this early, nearly 
filled, and the crowd was pourmg in. Every 
one in Paisley seemed to be here whatever his 
church affiliations may have been. The pour- 
ing in continued — the ushers were compelled 
to pack the seats, and then a few minutes 
before the appointed time for the appearance 
of the speaker, chairs were brought in and 
lined the aisles. All eyes were on the 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 113 

pulpit — it was expected that the speaker would 
appear there. The fame that went with the 
name of Alexander Campbell, and the excite- 
ment in many places, that had accompanied 
this visit of his to Scotland, the prominence 
of the men who had felt it their duty to op- 
pose him, and of those, also, who had espoused 
his cause as well as the reports and rumors 
which had flooded the land concerning his 
great power as a speaker, logician and theo- 
logian, had filled us with a sense of curiosity, 
which these few moments of waiting made 
quite impatient. Be not surprised, then, that 
a slight commotion and simultaneous turning 
of heads — even though grossly in violation of 
church etiquette — passed, like a wave, over 
the audience, when the whisper ran through 
the seats and galleries, ' There he comes !' I 
could not resist the impulse to turn my head 
slightly, and there I saw walking up the aisle 
three or four men. 

''The first one was the regular pastor of the 
church, whom I knew. He was followed by 
a venerable looking man of commanding ap- 
pearance, slightly above the medium stature, 
and firmly built. He carried a cane, but his 
motion betrayed not the least infirmity; it was 
vigorous and easy. He followed the minister 
up into the pulpit, and was seated. I did not 
from the first take my eyes from him. There 



114 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

was a peculiar fascination in his face that I 
could hardly account for. He was not by the 
most common standard a handsome man, and 
yet there was an unusual strength and mas- 
culinity of outlme in his features that was 
very striking. His nose was aquiline — the 
nose of one born to command ; his mouth that 
of the orator and teacher — inclined to be 
large, flexiblCj and in easy control ; it was not 
the set, tirm and taciturn mouth of the man 
who says little, but means much, but it was 
the mouth of one born to instruct — of the 
philosopher who has an overflow of thought 
and the sufficient gift of speech to pour it out 
in livid and lucid streams. But his penetrating 
eye — how shall I describe it? It was not, to 
use ornithological comparisons, the dreamy, 
meditative eye of the owl as she slumbers on 
in her proverbial wisdom, but it was the sharp 
flashing eye of the eagle, as she views from her 
lofty eyrie a wide expanse, taking it all in, in 
one quick grasp, and at the same time pene- 
trates with the closest scrutiny into the most 
hidden coverts. So much for the face of the 
great man. After the opening services he 
arose and began his discourse. His text 
was I. Cor. xiii: 13: ''Now abideth faith, 
hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of 
these is charity." He began by properl}^ de- 
fining charity as love. The first division of 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 115 

his sermon was taken up in an elucidation of 
faith. Under his treatment of this theme I 
saw the subject grow up before my mind in a 
reasonableness and symmetry of form that 
made it a new thing; the entire audience sat 
entranced for the whole hour that was taken 
up in the discussion of this theme; the old 
mysticism enveloping faith, which had been 
thrust upon me by the irrationalism of the 
evangelical Christianity in which I had been 
reared, passed away — I saw the subject face to 
face; I was growing into the manhood of 
Christian grace and knowledge. 

The second hour of his discourse was occu- 
pied in the treatment of the second Christian 
element, Hope, and nothing I had ever heard 
equalled the grandeur and sublimity of this 
theme under his master mind. Hope, alone, 
was now to me even greater than faith. He 
dwelt upon its beauty and its eternity — that 
even when all sorrow and affliction come upon 
us, the hope of God is our comfort. I remem- 
ber I thought while he spoke, of that closing 
passage in the ^'Pleasures of Hope" by his 
own great kinsman, Thomas Campbell : 

Eternal Hope! When yonder spheres sublime 
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of time, 
Thy joyous youth began; but not to fade 
When all thy sister planets have decayed— 
When wrapped in flames the realms of ether glow, 
And heaven's last thunder shakes the world below, 
Thou, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile, 
And light thy torch at nature's funeral pile. 



116 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

Then followed the treatment of the third 
theme — Love, which even surpassed the 
others. It is very distinct now in my mind. 
Through the whole three hours of that long 
and remarkable discourse/ not the least rest- 
lessness was visible in any part of the great 
audience even in that sultry day in summer. 
The time had passed away unnoticed. In the 
first part of the sermon he had leaned easily 
upon the pulpit, and through the whole dis- 
course, he hardly made a gesture. He made 
a complete capture of the whole audience, and 
from that day Paisley was distinguished for 
the sympathy and support it showed him in 
his troubles." 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 117 



XII. 

'•The Paisley sermon of Alexander Camp- 
bell completed my conversion. The debate 
with Owen had shown me the weakness of 
anti-Christian arguments — I was from that 
time on no longer a skeptic, but I was rather 
a negative Christian. This sermon was what I 
vet lacked — I went awav from it in full Chris- 
tian stature, a positive Christian I now was. 
From that day on Campbell was the theme of 
our conversation. Jeanette playfully called 
him 'our common father,' as he had also 
opened her mind to the light of Christian 
truth in a way she had never seen it before. 

''What was our surprise and shock when the 
news flashed through the town of Paisley that 
he had been imprisoned in Bridewell ! Vari- 
ous were the rumors that accompanied this in- 
telligence. Some said he had violently at- 
tacked a venerable clergyman of Glasgow, and 
was arrested for slander. Others said he was 
in prison for assault and battery upon a 
reverend old Edinburgh divine named Roberts. 
Then the report was circulated that be was 



118 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

apprehended just when he was about to take 
boat for Ireland to flee the country, for some 
misdemeanor of his in Glasgow. As a result 
of all this gossip, many turned against him. I 
remember seeing a group of men standmg 
on a street corner ; among them was a man 
whom I recognized to have been a few days 
before one of Campbell's loud supporters — 
his name was Sandy MacLaren. He was talk- 
ing with great earnestness. 

^I had my suspicions of him from the be- 
ginning,' said Sandy, '1 was convinced in ray 
own mind that he was a hard case and not to 
be trusted, but I said nothing. He has now 
turned out to be a fraud, just as I expected. 
I said to myself that God would bring him to 
justice, and this he has done. I now have the 
answer of a good conscience in the exercise 
of Christian forbearance, when if I had 
pleased to say but a word, I might have open- 
ed the eyes of all Scotland to the wickedness 
of this man. But the like of him will always 
receive their just deserts, and as forme Ihave 
played the Christian part, but I ask no praise. 
God will remember us all according to both 
good and bad.' 

*'I could listen to this no longer. It gave 
me another set-back. If such men as Sandy 
MacLaren were God's favorite children, I had 
no desire for the paternity. I was a young 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 119 

Christian, and weaker than I before would 
have admitted. The man who had dissolved 
my infidelity, and made me all the Christian 
that I was, had turned out a fraud, and was 
lying now in a prison cell. If that man is a 
fraud, I thought, it will not be difficult for me 
to believe that the Christ to whom he leads 
me is also a fraud, and the religion he unrolled 
to me a vast deception. In this state of mind 
I called at Deacon Craig's, and found Jean- 
ette sitting on a rustic bench under the shade 
of the garden tree. 

^I have been reading,' said she, ^this great 
debate. If it were not for what it has done 
for you, I think I should find it very tedious 
reading. My! isn't our common father 
learned? and what big words he uses I When 
I read his arguments, I forget all about the 
thoughts, and am lost in the charming laby- 
rinths of his language. He must be very 
great! He certainly is no common father. 
But why do you look so troubled?' 

'You have not heard of the great calamity 
that has befallen Dr. Campbell,' said I, 'he 
has been thrown into prison in Glasgow.' 

'Alexander Campbell in prison! I don't 
believe it. It's a false report. What is he in 
prison for?' 

'As nearly as I can learn from the papers, 
he has been arrested for libel against Eev. 



120 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

James Robertson, president of the Scottish 
Anti-Slavery Society.' 

^Mr. Campbell,' said she, 'is not in prison 
for libel. There is persecution in this matter. 
I remember hearing my father and another 
man talking about something like this a few 
days ago. Alexander Campbell is innocent, 
and in a short time there will be a great reac- 
tion in his favor. Don't feel that you have 
been deceived. Christianity is true, and God 
yet reigns, and Alexander Campbell will be 
vindicated.' 

''A few days after this I went to Glasgow, 
and visited the great reformer in his cold 
dungeon-like cellin Bridewell. I was present- 
ed by one of the deacons of the Baptist 
church in Paisley. The cell was crowded with 
visitors, many of them persons of distinction. 
The illustrious prisoner discoursed to them for 
hours upon all manner of themes pertaining to 
religious matters. 

''His friends begged of him to accept bail, 
awaiting the decision of his case, but he reso- 
lutely refused. 'I would still be a prisoner,' 
said he, 'and I prefer to be a prisoner con- 
fined than a prisoner at large. I desire to see 
how these anti-slavery philanthropists, bearing 
upon their standard the watch-word of liberty, 
will treat a stranger wandering upon their 
shores. I threw myself upon the mercy of 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 121 

their president, whom I wronged, if I wrong- 
ed any one. This man, thought I, will show 
me clemency, and even forgiveness, from the 
magnanimity of his profession. But his 
laconic word was: Take him to Jail; and in 
jail I am.' " 

It will be well for us here to recapitulate. 
We shall remember that when the challenge of 
debate on the slavery question passed between 
Robertson and Campbell, the latter agreed to 
it provided his opponent was not the Eev. 
James Eobertson who had some years before 
been expelled from a church in Dundee, for 
disgracefully abusing his mother. There 
were several Rev. James Robertsons, and 
Campbell had reason to fear it was the same 
man. Upon this point Robertson based his 
case, and it was with great reluctance permit- 
ted to pass the lower magistrates. Therefore 
Campbell was arrested and imprisoned. 



122 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 



XIII. 

Ere we return to the narrative of Donald 
MacBrayne, for such is the name of the man 
to whom we have lately been listening, a brief 
outline of the legal proceedings to which the 
arrest of Campbell led, might not be uninter- 
esting. The arrest was an obvious abuse of 
the spirit of the law, which was designed only 
to prevent solvent debtors from fleeing the 
country — from ' ' crossing over into Canada, ' ' 
in other words. But Campbell was arrested, 
thrown into prison, and had to wait the slow 
processes of the British courts. The facts 
upon which Robertson based his suit for libel, 
were obviously insufficient ; any Scottish law- 
yer could see that no libel was contained in 
the words which Campbell used and no libel 
was intended, although if there is any time 
when one man would be justified in venting 
his wrath on another man, it was surely then. 
Everything that Robertson could say which 
was calumnious and mean, had been posted in 
nearly every city to which the reformer went. 
A libel suit of good dimensions could have 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 123 

beea based upon these placards, with Camp- 
bell as the paintiff, and Robertson on the de- 
fensive, but Alexander Campbell was not a 
man constructed on a small and mean pattern, 
and ]t is not likely that that libel ever entered 
his mind. But a serpent extracts venom 
where a bee might find honey, and the Rev. 
James Robertson saw libel in the gentlemanly 
but cutting letter to the Edinburgh Journal. 

When the case came before Lord Murray, 
it was immediately dismissed by him — the 
facts were not equal to the complaint ; but 
the reverend gentleman was not satisfied ; he 
yet smarted under the castigation which he re- 
ceived from a man whom he saw growing in 
popularity and influence at every effort of his 
own against him. The case was appealed to 
the highest court of Scotland, the Court of 
Session, of which the great Lord Jeffrey, 
founder of the Edinburgh Review^ was then 
judge. Here again we introduce our speaker : 

''That the case was dismissed by Lord 
Murray as possessing not a sufficient cause for 
action was no surprise to any of us. Scottish 
jurists are justly famed for their integrity, 
and we were only impatient because every 
day made a change in the prisoner's health in 
the dark cell at Bridewell. A deep cold was 
taking possession of him, and the strain upon 
his mind and feelings was making its effects 



124 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

seen. He realized the whole horror of the in- 
carceration, and with a Gethsemane sorrow, his 
prayer was, 'Lord if it be thy will, take this 
cup from me.' But with heroic courao;e he 
could also add, 'Not my will, but thine be 
done.' Day after day wore heavily upon 
him. When the news of Lord Murray's deci- 
sion came to his cell,. it was filled with visitors. 
The joy with which it was received, was un- 
speakable. Some even wept in their gladness. 
Campbell's face shone with new light, and his 
eyes regained their wonted life at the pros- 
pect of an immediate release. But this sun- 
shine did not last long. In the evening of 
the same dav, a certain Malcolm Sturme, a 
great friend of Campbell, came in. Malcolm 
was a man whose face was an open book. As 
soon as we saw him, we knew there was some- 
thing wrong. 'Robertson has appealed to 
the Court of Session,' said he, 'another fort- 
night in this prison cell.' The indignation of 
those present began to vent itself in language 
expressive of actual feeling. But the prisoner 
was calm and self-possessed. Disappointment 
was plainly marked upon his face, but not a 
word did he utter which betrayed even the 
least resentment against his persecutor. 

"Robertson's friends very positively disap- 
proved of the appeal — in the first place, be- 
cause they saw it was useless, and in the sec- 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, 125 

ond, because the matter was taking too much 
the semblance of persecution, and the sympa- 
thy of the Scottish people was becoming 
aroused in CampbeU's favor, but Robertson 
was not inclined to let go of the last hold he 
had, and so the matter had to go through. I 
have heard it said that Lord Jeffrey, knowing 
that Campbell's imprisonment would come to a 
close at his decision, and knowing all the cir- 
cumstances of the affair, havmg heard Camp- 
bell's Edinburgh address, accelerated the legal 
proceedings as much as possible, so as to 
reach the case appealed from the decision of 
Judge Murray. Hence Campbell's days in 
Bridewell prison were cut shorter than they 
otherwise would have been. Though Camp- 
bell came out of prison with the universal 
sympathy of Scotland, I have heard it said he 
was never the same man again. A heavy cold 
had settled upon him, and a fever was taking 
hold of his hitherto robust constitution. A 
man nearly sixty years old is too old a man for 
such treatment. He had come to his father- 
land in the hopes of recruiting his strength, 
which the cares and activities of a busy career 
had somewhat shattered. A damp cell in Bride- 
well was no place for him. I almost weep 
when 1 think now of that old man, reviled but 
reviling not again, persecuted but speaking no 
evil of his enemy. He was not such a man as 



126 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

one would pity — he stood on a higher plane — 
but when I think it over now recalling his suf- 
ferings and forbearance, I feel that there is one 
thing that the world ought to start back and 
do over again. But he has been dead now for 
more than twenty-five years, and such repara- 
tion as was due him must be from the hand 
of Him who makes no mistakes." 

The thousands who waited in Ireland to 
hear the great man who had first seen the 
light in their land, were to be disappointed. 
The appointments which had been made for 
him in all the leading cities in the north of 
Ireland, were destined never to be filled. 
That voice which had been listened to by many 
hundred thousands, was never more to be 
heard in the land which gave it its first utter- 
ance. Its great power was being forever 
undermined by the cold, damp walls of Bride- 
well prison. The tedious days wore away; 
the iron constitution which had withstood the 
storms of abuse, and calumny, and the ardu- 
ous labors of a never-idle life, was now giving 
way. A few weeks more and the Eev. 
James Robertson would have been satisfied. 
But the decision of the Court of Sessions 
came in due season. The imprisonment of 
Alexander Campbell had been felt as the 
shame of Scotland, and widespread was the 
joy with which his liberation was hailed. 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 127 

Here again we resume the thread of our 
friend's narrative; 

''The audience which assembled in Glas- 
gow to greet and hear Alexander Campbell 
after his release was one of the largest I have 
ever seen within the walls. The hall was 
packed to suffocation. For the first time in 
Scotland he faced an audience which was almost 
entirely in sympathy with him. The hectic 
flush of fever was upon his face. He arose 
to speak. Breathless was the stillness that 
awaited him. The erect form which had 
challenged the admiration of an unfriendly 
Edinburgh audience, was weakened; and the 
penetrating voice, to whose volume and charm 
the former victory had been partially due, 
would hardly do its bidding. All felt the dif- 
ficulties under which he labored, and after 
a short effort he was again seated, aud a doc- 
tor, a classmate of Campbell's in Glasgow 
University, was called to the platform. He 
immediately announced that the speaker was 
laboring under a high fever. The disappoint- 
ed and sorrow-filled audience was dismissed. 
It was a silent dispersion. A few days later 
Alexander Campbell embarked from the land 
of his youth and education to return again no 
more. His sun had risen from behind British 
hills, but its last rays tinged an American 
horizon. 



128 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL'S 

''The disgrace to Scotland was soon re- 
trieved in the disgrace of the man who 
brought it upon her. The trial of James 
Robertson for false imprisonment resulted in 
his fleeing in shame from the land to avoid 
the satisfaction which the law would require 
of him, the very thing which he had made the 
ostensible cause of Campbell's arrest. He has 
never been heard of since and the weight of 
his own burdens fell upon the shoulders of his 
bondsmen. The fine which amounted to 
£2000 Mr. Campbell would not receive, but 
gave it to the Christian cause in the land of 
his persecution. 

''Such is the conclusion of the whole mat- 
ter. 'Justice and judgment are the habitation 
of his throne.' Though the great reformer 
lived nearly twenty years longer, it is said by 
those who knew him best that he never re- 
covered from the sad experiences I have 
related." 

While my friend was concluding his story, 
the "Clansman" was still plunging through 
the dark waters among the numerous islands^ 
of Western Scotland. The stars shone clear 
and bright. Unconsciously I had wrapped 
my ocean rug well about me. I looked at my 
watch ; it was three hours past midnight, so 
interesting had been the history to which I 
had been listening. The air was damp and 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 



129 



chilly. A faint silvery mist was beginning to 
besprinkle the Eastern sky when I went to 
seek a berth below. 

My story is ended. The main facts, here 
touched upon, have long since passed into his- 
tory. If these papers have served to add to 
the interest and better understanding of these 
facts, they have fulfilled the purpose of their 
writing. 



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